Mother India

//.'/. hy M. Moym A I'nv //

Tin-: rxTournAKLK
"Just .stood in the doorway." (Sec pn^f i^>3-)

MOTHER INDIA

BY

KATHERINE MAYO
AUTHOR OP "THE ISLES OP PEAK"

BLUE RIBBON BOOKS

NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT, 1927, BY
HASCOUBT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.

Published, May, 1927
Second Printing, June, 1927
Third Printing, July, 1927
Fourth Printing, July, 1927
Fifth Printing, August, 1927
Sixth Printing, October, 1927
Seventh Printing, October, 1927
Eighth Printing, November, 1927
Ninth Printing, November, 1927
Tenth Printing, November, 19-27
Eleventh Printing, December, 1927
Twelfth Printing, December, 19.27
Thirteenth Printing, January, iq^S
Fourteenth Printing, January, iqj8
Fifteenth Printing, January, igjS
Sixteenth Printing, January, 19^8
Seventeenth Printing, February, iqjS
Eighteenth Printing, March, ic>^8
Nineteenth Printing, June, 1928
Twentieth Printing, August, igj8
Twenty-first Printing, December, 1928
Twenty-second Printing, February, IO-JQ
Twenty-third Printing, September, iq.-y
Twenty- fourth Printing. Febrr:ir\ , lujo
Twenty-fifth Printing, June, njjjo
Twenty-sixth Printing. Jul>, in 30
Twenty-seventh Printing. July, INJO
Twenty-eighth Printing. September, 1930
Twenty-ninth Printing, October, 1930
Thirtieth Printing, October, iyju
Thirty-first Printing, December, 193
Thirty-second Printing, February, 1931
Thirty-third Printing Mir-K TO*T

PUNTED IN THE UNITED STATES OP AMERICA

PRINTED BY THE CORNWALL PRESS, INC.
CORNWALL. N. T.

To

THE PEOPLES OF INDIA

AND TO

THAT INDIAN FIELD LABORER

WHO ONCE, BY AN ACT OF

HUMANITY, SAVED

MY LIFE

"This is a sketch of the ordinary course of manners, ad-
ministration, and customs, so far as appeared to me to be pos-
sible. ... A description cannot be so complete but that some
one may say that he has on one occasion seen or learned some-
thing contrary to it; and consequently when such chatterers
talk, my [readers] will recognize that absolute concordance is
impossible of attainment."

The Remonstratle of Francisco Pelsaert Being the Con-
fidential Report of Francisco Pelsaert, Agent of the Dutch
East India Company, stationed in Agra from 1620 to 1627.
Lately printed in English, under title of Jahangir*s India.

foreword

It would be a great pleasure to thank, by name, the
many persons, both Indian and English, who have so
courteously facilitated my access to information, to
records, and to those places and things that I desired
to see for myself. But the facts that it was impossible
to forecast the conclusions I should reach, and that for
these conclusions they are in no way responsible, make
it improper to embarrass them now by connecting them
personally therewith.

For this reason the manuscript of this book has not
been submitted to any member of the Government of
India, nor to any Briton or Indian connected with of-*
ficial life. It has, however, been reviewed by certain
public health authorities of international eminence who
are familiar with the Indian field.

I may, on the other hand, express my deep indebted-
ness to my two friends, Miss M. Moyca Newell and
Harry Hubert Field, the one for her constant and
invaluable collaboration, the other for a helpfulness,
both in India and here, beyond either limit or thanks.

K. M.

BEDFORD HILLS
NEW YORK

[ix]

Table of Contents

Pan I

CHAPTER PAGI

INTRODUCTION: THE BUS TO MANDALAY 3

I. THE ARGUMENT II

ii. "SLAVE MENTALITY" 19

III. MARBLES AND TOPS 33

IV. EARLY TO MARRY AND EARLY TO DIE 42
V. SPADES ARE SPADES 51

Part II

INTERLUDE: THE GRAND TRUNK

ROAD 65

VI. THE EARTHLY GOD 68

VII. WAGES OF SIN 8 1

VIII. MOTHER INDIA 9<3

IX. BEHIND THE VEIL III

X. WOMAN THE SPINSTER 123

Part III

INTERLUDE: THE BRAHMAN 145

XI. LESS THAN MEN I5O

XII. BEHOLD, A LIGHT! 164

XIII. GIVE ME OFFICE OR GIVE ME DEATH 178

XIV. WE BOTH MEANT WELL 189

xv. "WHY is LIGHT DENIED?" 199

XVI. A COUNSEL OF PERFECTION 211

CONTENTS

Part IV

5HAPTE* PAGE

INTERLUDE: MR. GANDHI 221

XVII. THE SIN OF THE SALVATION ARMY 223

XVIII. THE SACRED COW 235

XIX. THE QUALITY OF MERCY 2$O

XX. IN THE HOUSE OF HER FRIENDS 262

XXI. HOME OF STARK WANT 2JO

XXII. THE REFORMS 289

XXIII. PRINCES OF INDIA 306

Part V

INTERLUDE: INTO THE NORTH 321

XXIV. FIREBRANDS TO STRAW 324
XXV. SONS OF THE PROPHET 339

XXVI. THE HOLY CITY 355

XXVII. THE WORLD-MENACE 366

xxvui. "QUACKS WHOM WE KNOW" 379

XXIX. PSYCHOLOGICAL GLIMPSES THROUGH

THE ECONOMIC LENS 389

xxx. CONCLUSION 409

APPENDIX 411

INDEX 425

Introduction

THE BUS TO MANDALAY

Calcutta, second largest city in the British Empire,
spread along the Ganges called Hooghly, at the top
of the Bay of Bengal. Calcutta, big, western, modern,
with public buildings, monuments, parks, gardens, hos-
pitals, museums, University, courts of law, hotels,
offices, shops, all of which might belong to a prosperous
American cityj and all backed by an Indian town of
temples, mosques, bazaars and intricate courtyards and
alleys that has somehow created itself despite the rec-
tangular lines shown on the map. In the courts and
alleys and bazaars many little bookstalls, where narrow-
chested, near-sighted, anaemic young Bengali students,
in native dress, brood over piles of fly-blown Russian
pamphlets.

Rich Calcutta, wide-open door to the traffic of the
world and India, traffic of bullion, of jute, of cotton
of all that India and the world want out of each
other's hands. Decorous, sophisticated Calcutta, where
decorous and sophisticated people of all creeds, all
colors and all costumes go to Government House Gar-
den Parties, pleasantly to make their bows to Their
Excellencies, and pleasantly to talk good English while
they take their tea and ices and listen to the regimental
band.

You cannot see the street from Government House

[3]

MOTHER INDIA

Gardens, for the walls are high. But if you could,
you would see it filled with traffic motor traffic,
mostly limousines, touring cars, taxis and private ma-
chines. And rolling along among them now and again,
a sort of Fifth Avenue bus, bearing the big-lettered
label, "Kali Ghat."

This bus, if you happen to notice it, proceeds along
the parkside past the Empire Theater, the various
clubs, St. Paul's Cathedral, past the Bishop's House,
the General Hospital, the London Missionary So-
ciety's Institution, and presently comes to a stop in a
rather congested quarter, which is its destination as
advertised.

"Kali Ghat" "place of Kali" is the root-word of
the name Calcutta. Kali is a Hindu goddess, wife of
the great god Siva, whose attribute is destruction and
whose thirst is for blood and death-sacrifice. Her spir-
itual domination of the world began about five thou-
sand years ago, and should last nearly four hundred
and thirty-two thousand years to come.

Kali has thousands of temples in India, great and
small. This of Calcutta is the private property of a
family of Brahmans who have owned it for some three
centuries. A round hundred of these, "all sons of one
father," share its possession today. And one of the
hundred obligingly led me, with a Brahman friend,
through the precincts. Let him be called Mr. Haldar,
for that is the family's name.

But for his white petticoat-drawers and his white
toga, the usual Bengali costume, Mr. Haldar mighl

ui

THE BUS TO MANDALAY

have been taken for a well-groomed northern Italian
gentleman. His English was polished and his manner
entirely agreeable.

Five hundred and ninety acres, tax free, constitute
the temple holding, he said. Pilgrims from far and
near, with whom the shrine is always crowded, make
money offerings. There are also priestly fees to col-
lect. And the innumerable booths that shoulder each
other up and down the approaches, booths where sweet-
meats, holy images, marigold flowers, amulets, and
votive offerings are sold, bring in a sound income.

Rapidly cleaving a way through the coming and
going mass of the devotees, Mr. Haldar leads us to the
temple proper. A high platform, roofed and pillared,
approached on three sides by tiers of steps of its own
length and width. At one end, a deep, semi-enclosed
shrine in which, dimly half -visible, looms the figure
of the goddess. Black of face she is, with a monstrous
lolling tongue, dripping blood. Of her four hands, one
grasps a bleeding human head, one a knife, the third,
outstretched, cradles blood, the fourth, raised in men-
ace, is empty. In the shadows close about her feet stand
the priests ministrant.

On the long platform before the deity, men and
Women prostrate themselves in vehement supplication.
Among them stroll lounging boys, sucking lollypops
fixed on sticks. Also, a white bull-calf wanders, while
one reverend graybeard in the midst of it all, squatting
cross-legged on the pavement before a great book, lifts
up a droning voice.

isi

MOTHER INDIA

"He," said Mr. Haldar, "is reading to the worshipers
from our Hindu mythology. The history of Kali."

Of a sudden, a piercing outburst of shrill bleating.
We turn the corner of the edifice to reach the open
courtyard at the end opposite the shrine. Here stand
two priests, one with a cutlass in his hand, the other
holding a young goat. The goat shrieks, for in the air
is that smell that all beasts fear. A crash of sound, as
before the goddess drums thunder. The priest who
holds the goat swings it up and drops it, stretched by
the legs, its screaming head held fast in a cleft post.
The second priest with a single blow of his cutlass de-
capitates the little creature. The blood gushes forth on
the pavement, the drums and the gongs before the
goddess burst out wildly. "Kali! Kali! Kali!" shout
all the priests and the suppliants together, some fling-
ing themselves face downward on the temple floor.

Meantime, and instantly, a woman who waited be-
hind the killers of the goat has rushed forward and
fallen on all fours to lap up the blood with her tongue
"in the hope of having a child." And now a second
woman, stooping, sops at the blood with a cloth, and
thrusts the cloth into her bosom, while half a dozen
sick, sore dogs, horrioly misshapen by nameless diseases,
stick their hungry muzzles into the lengthening pool
of gore.

"In this manner we kill here from one hundred and
fifty to two hundred kids each day," says Mr. Haldar
with some pride. "The worshipers supply the kids."

Now he leads us among the chapels of minor deities

[6]

THE BUS TO MANDALAY

that of the little red goddess of smallpox, side by
side with her littler red twin who dispenses chicken pox
or not, according to humor j that of the five-headed blade
cobra who wears a tiny figure of a priest beneath his
chin, to whom those make offerings who fear snake-
bite j that of the red monkey-god, to whom wrestlers do
homage before the boutj that to which rich merchants
and students of the University pray, before confronting
examinations or risking new ventures in trade j that of
"the Universal God," a mask, only, like an Alaskan
totem. And then the ever-present phallic emblem of
Siva, Kali's husband. Before them all, little offerings
of marigold blossoms, or of red wads of something in
baskets trimmed with shells, both of which may be had
at the temple booths, at a price, together with sacred
cakes made of the dung of the temple bulls.

Mr. Haldar leads us through a lane down which,
neatly arranged in rows, sit scores of more or less naked
holy men and mendicants, mostly fat and hairy and
covered with ashes, begging. All are eager to be pho-
tographed. Saddhus reverend ascetics spring up and
pose. One, a madman, flings himself at us, badly scar-
ing a little girl who is being towed past by a young
rnan whose wrist is tied to her tiny one by the two
ends of a scarf. "Husband and new wife," says Mr.
Haldar. "They come to pray for a son."

We proceed to the temple burning-ghat. A burning
is in progress. In the midst of an open space an oblong
pit, dug in the ground. This is now half filled with
sticks of wood. On the ground, dose by, lies a rather

MOTHER INDIA

beautiful young Indian woman, relaxed as though in a
swoon. Her long black hair falls loose around her, a
few flowers among its meshes. Her forehead, her
hands and the soles of her feet are painted red, show-
ing that she is blessed among women, in that she is
saved from widowhood her husband survives her.
The relatives, two or three men and a ten-year-old boy,
standing near, seem uninterested. Crouching at a dis-
tance, one old woman, keening. Five or six beggars
like horse-flies nagging about.

Now they take up the body and lay it on the pile of
wood in the pit. The woman's head turns and one arm
drops, as though she moved in her sleep. She died only
a few hours ago. They heap sticks of wood over her,
tossing it on until it rises high. Then the little boy, her
son, walks seven times around the pyre, carrying a
torch. After that he throws the torch into the wood,
flames and smoke rush up, and the ceremony is done.

"With a good fire everything burns but the navel,"
explains Mr. Haldar. "That is picked out of the ashes,
by the temple attendants, and, with a gold coin provided
by the dead person's family, is rolled in a ball of clay
and flung into the Ganges. We shall now see the
Ganges."

Again he conducts us through the crowds to a point
below the temple, where runs a muddy brook, shallow
and filled with bathers. "This," says Mr. Haldar, "is
the most ancient remaining outlet of the Ganges.
Therefore its virtues are accounted great. Hundreds
of thousands of sick persons come here annually to

[8]

THE BUS TO MANDALAY

bathe and be cured of their sickness just as you see those
doing now. Also, such as would supplicate the god-
dess for other reasons bathe here first, to be cleansed
of their sins."

As the bathers finished their ablutions, they drank
of the water that lapped their knees. Then most of
them devoted a few moments to grubbing with their
hands in the bottom, bringing up handfuls of mud
which they carefully sorted over in their palms.
"Those," said Mr. Haldar, "are looking for the gold
*oins flung in from the burning-ghat. They hope."

Meantime, up and down the embankment, priests
came and went, each leading three or four kids, which
they washed in the stream among the bathers and then
dragged back, screaming and struggling, toward the
temple forecourt. And men and women bearing water-
jars, descending and ascending, filled their jars in the
stream and disappeared by the same path.

"Each kid," continued Mr. Haldar, "must be purified
in the holy stream before it is slain. As for the water-
carriers, they bring the water as an offering. It is
poured over Kali's feet, and over the feet of the priests
that stand before her."

As Mr. Haldar took leave of us, just at the rear of
the outer temple wall, I noticed a drain-hole about the
size of a man's hand, piercing the wall at the level of
the ground. By this hole, on a little flat stone, lay a
few marigold flowers, a few rose-petals, a few pennies.
As I looked, suddenly out of the hole gushed a flow

[9]

MOTHER INDIA

of dirty water, and a woman, rushing up, thrust a cup
under it and drank.

"That is our holy Ganges water, rendered more holy
by having flowed over the feet of Kali and her priests.
From the floor of the shrine it is carried here by this
ancient drain. It is found most excellent against dysen-
tery and enteric fever. The sick who have strength to
move drink it here, first having bathed in the Ganges.
To those too ill to come, their friends may carry it."

So we found our waiting motor and rolled away, past
the General Hospital, the Bishop's House, the various
Clubs, the Empire Theater, straight into the heart of
Calcutta in a few minutes' time.

<c Why did you go to Kali Ghat? That is not India.
Only the lowest and most ignorant of Indians are Kali
worshipers," said an English Theosophist, sadly, next
day.

I repeated the words to one of the most learned and
distinguished of Bengali Brahmans. His comment was
this:

"Your English friend is wrong. It is true that in the
lower castes the percentage of worshipers of Kali is
larger than the percentage of the worshipers of Vishnu,
perhaps because the latter demands some self-restraint,
such as abstinence from intoxicants. But hundreds of
thousands of Brahmans, everywhere, worship Kali, and
the devotees at Kali Ghat will include Hindus of all
castes and conditions, among whom are found some of
the most highly educated and important personages of
this town and of India."

[10]

Chapter I

THE ARGUMENT

The area we know as India is nearly half as large as
the United States. Its population is three times greater
than ours. Its import and export trade as yet but the
germ of the possible amounted, in the year 1924-25,
to about two and a half billion dollars. 1 And Bombay
is but three weeks* journey from New York.

Under present conditions of human activity, whereby,
whether we will or no, the roads that join us to every
part of the world continually shorten and multiply^ it
would appear that some knowledge of main facts con-
cerning so big and today so near a neighbor should be
a part of our intelligence and our self-protection.

But what does the average American actually know
about India? That Mr. Gandhi lives there; also tigers.
His further ideas, if such he has, resolve themselves
into more or less hazy notions more or less uncon-
iciously absorbed from professional propagandists out
of one camp or another; from religious or mystical
kources; or from tales and travel-books, novels and
Verses, having India as their scene.

It was dissatisfaction with this status that sent me
fo India, to see what a volunteer unsubsidized, un-

1 Review of the Trade of India in 1924-25, Department of Com-*
mercial Intelligence and Statistics, Calcutta, 1926, p. 51,

MOTHER INDIA

committed, and unattached, could observe of common
things in daily human life.

Leaving untouched the realms of religion, of poli-
tics, and of the arts, I would confine my inquiry to
such workaday ground as public health and its con-
tributing factors. I would try to determine, for exam-
ple, what situation would confront a public health offi-
cial charged with the duty of stopping an epidemic of
cholera or of plague j what elements would work for
and against a campaign against hookworm; or what
forces would help or hinder a governmental effort to
lower infant mortality, to better living conditions, or
to raise educational levels, supposing such work to be
required.

None of these points could well be wrapped in
"eastern mystery," and all concern the whole family
of nations in the same way that the sanitary practices
of John Smith of 23 Main Street concern Peter Jones
at the other end of the block.

Therefore, in early October, 1925, I went to Lon-
don, called at India Office, and, a complete stranger,
stated my plan.

"What would you like us to do for your " asked the
gentlemen who received me.

"Nothing," I answered, "except to believe what I
say. A foreign stranger prying about India, not study-
ing ancient architecture, not seeking philosophers or
poets, not even hunting big game, and commissioned
by no one, anywhere, may seem a queer figure. Es-
pecially if that stranger develops an acute tendency to

[12]

THE ARGUMENT

ask questions. I should like it to be accepted that I am
neither an idle busybody nor a political agent, but
merely an ordinary American citizen seeking test facts
to lay before my own people."

To such Indians as I met, whether then or later,
I made the same statement. In the period that fol-
lowed, the introductions that both gave me, coupled
with the untiring courtesy and helpfulness alike of
Indians and of British, official or private, all over
India, made possible a survey more thorough than
could have been accomplished in five times the time
without such aid.

"But whatever you do, be careful not to generalize,"
the British urged. "In this huge country little or
nothing is everywhere true. Madras and Peshawar,
Bombay and Calcutta attribute the things of one of
these to any one of the others, and you are out of
court."

Those journeys I made, plus many another up and
down and across the land. Everywhere I talked with
health officers, both Indian and British, of all degrees,
going out with them into their respective fields, city or
rural, to observe their tasks and their ways of handling
them. I visited hospitals of many sorts and localities,
talked at length with the doctors, and studied condi-
tions and cases. I made long sorties in the open coun-
try from the North-West Frontier to Madras, some-
times accompanying a district commissioner on his
tours of checkered duty, sometimes "sitting in" at vil-
lage councils of peasants, or at Indian municipal board

[13]

MOTHER INDIA

meetings, or at court sessions with their luminous pa-
rade of life. I went with English nurses into bazaars
and courtyards and inner chambers and over city roofs,
visiting where need called. I saw, as well, the homes
of the rich. I studied the handling of confinements,
the care of children and of the sick, the care and pro-
tection of food, and the values placed upon cleanli-
ness. I noted the personal habits of various castes and
grades, in travel or at home, in daily life. I visited
agricultural stations and cattle-farms, and looked into
the general management of cattle and crops. I inves-
tigated the animal sanctuaries provided by Indian
piety. I saw the schools, and discussed with teachers
and pupils their aims and experience. The sittings of
the various legislatures, all-India and provincial, re-
paid attendance by the light they shed upon the mind-
quality of the elements represented. I sought and
found private opportunity to question eminent Indians
princes, politicians, administrators, religious leaders j
and the frankness of their talk, as to the mental and
physical status and conditions of the peoples of India,
thrown out upon the background of my personal ob-
servation, proved an asset of the first value.

And just this excellent Indian frankness finally led
me to think that, after all, there are perhaps certain
points on which south, north, east and west you can
generalize about India. Still more: that you can gen-
eralize about the only matters in which we of the busy
West will, to a man, see our own concern.

John Smith of 23 Main Street may care little

THE GOAT-SLAYERS

Priests in Kali-ghat O'.v page 6.)

THE ARGUMENT

enough about the ancestry of Peter Jones, and still
less about his religion, his philosophy, or his views on
art. But if Peter cultivates habits of living and ways
of thinking that make him a physical menace not only
to himself and his family, but to all the rest of the
block, then practical John will want details.

"Why," ask modern Indian thinkers, "why, after
all the long years of British rule, are we still marked
among the peoples of the world for our ignorance,
our poverty, and our monstrous death rate? By what
right are light and bread and life denied? n

"What this country suffers from is want of initia-
tive, want of enterprise, and want of hard, sustained
work," mourns Sir Chimanlal Setalvad. 2 "We rightly
charge the English rulers for our helplessness and lack
of initiative and originality," says Mr. Gandhi. 8

Other public men demand: "Why are our enthusi-
asms so sterile? Why are our mutual pledges, our self-
dedications to brotherhood and the cause of liberty so
soon spent and forgotten? Why is our manhood itself
so brief? Why do we tire so soon and die so young?"
Only to answer themselves with the cry: "Our spir-
itual part is wounded and bleeding. Our very souls are
poisoned by the shadow of the arrogant stranger, blot-
ting out our sun. Nothing can be done nothing, any-
where, but to mount the political platform and faith-
fully denounce our tyrant until he takes his flight.
When Britain has abdicated and gone, then, and not

* Legislative Assembly Debates, 1925, Vol. VI, No. 6, p. 396.
8 Young India, March 25, 1926, p. 112. This is Mr. Gandhi's weekly
publication from which much hereinafter will be quoted

[15]

MOTHER INDIA

till then, free men breathing free air, may we turn our
minds to the lesser needs of our dear Mother India."

Now it is precisely at this point, and in a spirit of
hearty sympathy with the suffering peoples, that I
venture my main generality. It is this:

The British administration of India, be it good, bad,
or indifferent, has nothing whatever to do with the
conditions above indicated. Inertia, helplessness, lack
of initiative and originality, lack of staying power and
of sustained loyalties, sterility of enthusiasm, weakness
of life-vigor itself all are traits that truly charac-
terize the Indian not only of today, but of long-past
history. All, furthermore, will continue to characterize
him, in increasing degree, until he admits their causes
and with his own two hands uproots them. His soul
and body are indeed chained in slavery. But he him-
self wields and hugs his chains and with violence de-
fends them. No agency but a new spirit within his own,
breast can set him free. And his arraignments of out-
side elements, past, present, or to come, serve only to
deceive his own mind and to put off the day of his
deliverance.

Take a girl child twelve years old, a pitiful physical
specimen in bone and blood, illiterate, ignorant, with-
out any sort of training in habits of health. Force
motherhood upon her at the earliest possible moment.
Rear her weakling son in intensive vicious practices that
drain his small vitality day by day. Give him no outlet
in sports. Give him habits that make him, by the time
he is thirty years of age, a decrepit and querulous old

[16]

THE ARGUMENT

wreck and will you ask what has sapped the energy
of his manhood?

Take a huge population, mainly rural, illiterate and
loving its illiteracy. Try to give it primary education
without employing any of its women as teachers be-
cause if you do employ them you invite the ruin of
each woman that you so expose. Will you ask why
that people's education proceeds slowly?

Take bodies and minds bred and built on the lines
thus indicated. Will you ask why the death rate is high
and the people poor?

Whether British or Russians or Japanese sit in the
seat of the highest} whether the native princes divide
the land, reviving old days of princely dominance j or
whether some autonomy more complete than that now
existing be set up, the only power that can hasten the
pace of Indian development toward freedom, beyond
the pace it is traveling today, is the power of the men
of India, wasting no more time in talk, recriminations,
and shiftings of blame, but facing and attacking, with
the best resolution they can muster, the task that awaits
them in their own bodies and souls.

This subject has not, I believe, been presented in
common print. The Indian does not confront it in its
entirety} he knows its component parts, but avoids the
embarrassment of assembling them or of drawing their
essential inferences. The traveler in India misses it,
having no occasion to delve below the picturesque sur-
face into living things as they are. The British official
will especially avoid it will deprecate its handling by

[17]

MOTHER INDIA

others. His own daily labors, since the Reforms of
1919, hinge upon persuasion rather than upon com-
mand j therefore his hopes of success, like his orders
from above, impose the policy of the gentle word.
Outside agencies working for the moral welfare of the
Indian seem often to have adopted the method of en-
couraging their beneficiary to dwell on his own merits
and to harp upon others' shortcomings, rather than to
face his faults and conquer them. And so, in the midst
of an agreement of silence or flattery, you find a sick
man growing daily weaker, dying, body and brain, of
a disease that only himself can cure, and with no one,
anywhere, enough his friend to hold the mirror up
and show him plainly what is killing him.

In shouldering this task myself, I am fully aware
of the resentments I shall incur: of the accusations of
muck-raking; of injustice; of material-mindedness; of
lack of sympathy; of falsehood perhaps; perhaps of
prurience. But the fact of having seen conditions and
their bearings, and of being in a position to present
them, would seem to deprive one of the right to in-
dulge a personal reluctance to incur consequences.

Here, in the beginning of this book, therefore,
stands the kernel of what seems to me the most im-
portant factor in the life and future of one-eighth of
the human race. In the pages to come will be found an
attempt to widen the picture, stretching into other
fields and touching upon other aspects of Indian life.
But in no field, in no aspect, can that life escape the
influences of its inception.

fi8]

Chapter II
"SLAVE MENTALITY"

"Let us not put off everything until Swaraj * is at-
tained and thus put off Swaraj itself," pleads Gandhi.
"Swaraj can be had only by brave and clean people." 2

But, in these days of the former leader's waned in-
fluence, it is not for such teachings that he gains ears.
From every political platform stream flaming protests
of devotion to the death to Mother India; but India's
children fit no action to their words. Poor indeed she
is, and sick ignorant and helpless. But, instead of
flinging their strength to her rescue, her ablest sons, as
they themselves lament, spend their time in quarrels
together or else lie idly weeping over their own futility.

Meantime the British Government, in administering
the affairs of India, would seem to have reached a set
rate of progress, which, if it be not seriously inter-
rupted, might fairly be forecast decade by decade. So
many schools constructed, so many hospitals; so many
furlongs of highway laid, so many bridges built; so
many hundred miles of irrigation canal dug; so many
markets made available; so many thousand acres of
waste land brought under homestead cultivation; so
many wells sunk; so much rice and wheat and millet

1 Self-government.

2 Young India, Nov. 19, 1925, p. 399.

[19]

MOTHER INDIA

and cotton added to the country's food and trade re-
sources.

This pace of advance, compared to the huge needs
of the country, or compared to like movements in the
United States or in Canada, is slow. To hasten it ma-
terially, one single element would suffice the hearty,
hard-working and intelligent devotion to the practical
job itself, of the educated Indian. Today, however,
few signs appear, among Indian public men, of con-
cern for the status of the masses, while they curse the
one power which, however little to their liking, is
doing practically all of whatever is done for the com-
fort of sad old Mother India.

The population of all India is reckoned, in round
numbers, to be 3i9,ooo,ooo. 3 Setting aside Indian
States ruled by Indian princes, that of British India is
247,000,000. Among these peoples live fewer than
200,000 Europeans, counting every man, woman and
child in the land, from the Viceroy down to the hab-
erdasher's baby. The British personnel of the Army,
including all ranks, numbers fewer than 60,000 men.
The British Civilian cadre, inclusive of the Civil
Service, the medical men, the engineers, foresters,
railway administrators, mint, assay, educational, agri-
cultural and veterinary experts, etc., etc., totals 3,432
men. Of the Indian Police Service, the British mem-
bership approximates 4,000. This last figure excludes
the subordinate and provincial services, in which the
number of Europeans is, however, negligible.

8 The Indian Year Book, Times Press, Bombay, 1926, p. 13.

J *SLAVE MENTALITY"

Representing the British man-power in India today,
you therefore have these figures:

Army 60,000

Civil Services 3>43 2

Police 4,000

67,432

This is the entire local strength of the body to whose
oppressive presence the Indian attributes what he him-
self describes as the "slave mentality" of 247,000,000
human beings.

But one must not overlook the fact that, back of
Britain's day, India was ever either a chaos of small
wars and brigandage, chief preying upon chief, and all
upon the people 5 or else she was the flaccid subject of
a foreign rule. If, once and again, a native king arose
above the rest and spread his sway, the reign of his
house was short, and never covered all of India. Again
and again conquering forces came sweeping through the
mountain passes down out of Central Asia. And the
ancient Hindu stock, softly absorbing each recurrent
blow, quivered and lay still.

Many a reason is advanced to account for these
things, as, the devitalizing character of the Hindu re-
ligion, with its teachings of the nothingness of things as
they seem, of the infinitude of lives dreams all to
follow this present seeming. And this element, beyond
doubt, plays its part. But we, as "hard-headed Ameri-
cans," may, for a beginning, put such matters aside
while we consider points on which we shall admit less

[21]

MOTHER INDIA

room for debate and where we need no interpreter and
no glossary.

The whole pyramid of the Hindu's woes, material
and spiritual poverty, sickness, ignorance, political
minority, melancholy, ineffectiveness, not forgetting
that subconscious conviction of inferiority which he for-
ever bares and advertises by his gnawing and imagina-
tive alertness for social affronts rests upon a rock-
bottom physical base. This base is, simply, his manner
of getting into the world and his sex-life thencefor-
ward.

In the great orthodox Hindu majority, the girl looks
for motherhood nine months after reaching puberty 4
or anywhere between the ages of fourteen and eight.
The latter age is extreme, although in some sections
not exceptional 5 the former is well above the average.
Because of her years and upbringing and because count-
less generations behind her have been bred even as she,
she is frail of body. She is also completely unlettered,
her stock of knowledge comprising only the ritual of
worship of the household idols, the rites of placation
of the wrath of deities and evil spirits, and the de-
tailed ceremony of the service of her husband, who is
ritualistically her personal god.

As to the husband, he may be a child scarcely older
than herself or he may be a widower of fifty, when
first he requires of her his conjugal rights. In any case,
whether from immaturity or from exhaustion, he has
small vitality to transmit.
* Cf . post., p. 44.

[22]

"SLAVE MENTALITY"

The little mother goes through a destructive preg-
nancy, ending in a confinement whose peculiar tortures
will not be imagined unless in detail explained.

The infant that survives the birth-strain a feeble
creature at best, bankrupt in bone-stuff and vitality,
often venereally poisoned, always predisposed to any
malady that may be afloat must look to his child-
mother for care. Ignorant of the laws of hygiene,
guided only by the most primitive superstitions, she
has no helpers in her task other than the older women
of the household, whose knowledge, despite their
years, is little greater than hers. Because of her place
in the social system, child-bearing and matters of pro-
creation are the woman's one interest in life, her one
subject of conversation, be her caste high or low.
Therefore, the child growing up in the home learns,
from earliest grasp of word and act, to dwell upon sex
relations.

Siva, one of the greatest of the Hindu deities, is
represented, on highroad shrines, in the temples, on
the little altar of the home, or in personal amulets, by
the image of the male generative organ, in which
shape he receives the daily sacrifices of the devout.
The followers of Vishnu, multitudinous in the south,
from their childhood wear painted upon their fore-
heads the sign of the function of generation.* And
although it is accepted that the ancient inventors of
these and kindred emblems intended them as aids to
the climbing of spiritual heights, practice and extremely
f Fanciful interpretations of this symbol are sometimes given.

MOTHER INDIA

detailed narratives of the intimacies of the gods, pre-
served in the hymns of the fireside, give them literal
meaning and suggestive power, as well as religious
sanction in the common mind. 6

"Fools," says a modern teacher of the spiritual sense
of the phallic cult, "do not understand, and they never
will, for they look at it only from the physical side." T

But, despite the scorn of the sage, practical observa-
tion in India forces one to the conclusion that a re-
ligion adapted to the wise alone leaves most of the
sheep unshepherded.

And, even though the sex-symbols themselves were
not present, there are the sculptures and paintings on
temple walls and temple chariots, on palace doors and
street-wall frescoes, realistically demonstrating every
conceivable aspect and humor of sex contact; there are
the eternal songs on the lips of the women of the
household; there is, in brief, the occupation and pre-
occupation of the whole human world within the child's
vision, to predispose thought.

It is true that, to conform to the International Con-
vention for the Suppression of the Circulation of and
Traffic in Obscene Publications, signed in Geneva on
September 12, 1923, the Indian Legislature duly
amended the Indian Penal Code and Code of Criminal
Procedure; and that this amendment duly prescribes

6 Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Abb* J. A. Dtibois,
1821. Edited and corrected by H. K. Beauchamp. Clarendon Press,
Oxford, 1924, pp. 1 1 1- 1 12, 628-31, etc.

7 Swami Vivekananda, in Bhakti Yoga. For a brief and liberal
discussion of the topic see Chapter XIII in The Heart of Aryavarta.
by the Earl of Ronaldshay, Constable & Co., Ltd., London, 1925.

[24]

"SLAVE MENTALITY'*

set penalties for "whoever sells, lets to hire, distrib-
utes, publicly exhibits . . . conveys ... or receives
profit from any obscene object, book, representation or
figure." But its enactment unqualified, although wel-
come to the Muhammadans, would have wrought havoc
with the religious belongings, the ancient traditions
and customs and the priestly prerogatives dear to the
Hindu majority. Therefore the Indian Legislature,
preponderantly Hindu, saddled the amendment with
an exception, which reads: 8

This section does not extend to any book, pamphlet, writing,
drawing or painting kept or used bona fide for religious pur-
poses or any representation sculptured, engraved, painted or
otherwise represented on or in any temple, or on any car used
for the conveyance of idols, or kept or used for any religious
purpose.

In many parts of the country, north and south, the
little boy, his mind so prepared, is likely, if physically
attractive, to be drafted for the satisfaction of grown
men, or to be regularly attached to a temple, in the
capacity of prostitute. Neither parent as a rule sees any
harm in this, but is, rather, flattered that the son has
been found pleasing.

This, also, is a matter neither of rank nor of special
ignorance. In fact, so far are they from seeing good
and evil as we see good and evil, that the mother,
high caste or low caste, will practice upon her children
the girl "to make her sleep well," the boy "to make

* Indian Penal Code, Act No. VIII of 1925, Section 292.

MOTHER INDIA

him manly," an abuse which the boy, at least, is apt to
continue daily for the rest of his life.

This last point should be noticed. Highest medical
authority in widely scattered sections attests that prac-
tically every child brought under observation, for
whatever reason, bears on its body the signs of this
habit. Whatever opinion may be held as to its physical
effects during childhood, its effect upon early thought-
training cannot be overlooked. And, when constantly
practiced during mature life, its devastation of body
and nerves will scarcely be questioned.

Ancient Hindu religious teachings are cited to prove
that the marriage of the immature has not original
Scriptural sanction. Text is flung against text, in each
recurrence of the argument. Pundits radically disagree.
But against the fog evoked in their dispute stand sharp
and clear the facts of daily usage. Hindu custom de-
mands that a man have a legitimate son at the earliest
possible moment a son to perform the proper reli-
gious ceremonies at and after the death of the father
and to crack the father's skull on the funeral pyre,
according to his caste's ritual. For this reason as well
as from inclination, the beginning of the average boy's
sexual commerce barely awaits his ability. Neither gen-
eral habit nor public opinion confines that commerce
to his wife or wives.

Mr. Gandhi has recorded that he lived with his
wife, as such, when he was thirteen years old, and
adds that if he had not, unlike his brother in similar
case, left her presence for a certain period each day

[26]

"SLAVE MENTALITY"

to go to school, he "would either have fallen a prey
to disease and premature death, or have led [thence-
forth] a burdensome existence." 9

Forced up by western influences, the subject of child
marriages has been much discussed of latter years
and a sentiment of uneasiness concerning it is percep-
tibly rising in the Indian mind. But as yet this finds
small translation into act, and the orthodox Hindu
majority fights in strength on the side of the ancient
practice.

Little in the popular Hindu code suggests self-
restraint in any direction, least of all in sex relations.
"My father," said a certain eminent Hindu barrister,
one of the best men in his province, "taught me wisely,
in my boyhood, how to avoid infection."

"Would it not have been better," I asked, "had he
taught you continence?"

"Ah but we know that to be impossible."

"No question of right or wrong can be involved in
any aspect of such matters," a famous Hindu mystic,
himself the venerated teacher of multitudes, explained
to me. "I forget the act the moment I have finished
it. I merely do it not to be unkind to my wife, who is
less illumined than I. To do it or not to do it, signi-
fies nothing. Such things belong only to the world of
illusion."

After the rough outline just given, small surprise
will meet the statement that from one end of the land
to the other the average male Hindu of thirty years,

Young India, Jan. 7, 1926.

MOTHER INDIA

provided he has means to command his pleasure, is an
old man j and that from seven to eight out of every
ten such males between the ages of twenty-five and
thirty are impotent. These figures are not random, and
are affected by little save the proviso above given }
a cultivator of the soil, because of his poverty and his
life of wholesome physical exertion during a part of
the year, is less liable than the man of means, or the
city dweller. A sidelight will be found by a glance
down the advertisement space of Indian-owned news-
papers. Magical drugs and mechanical contrivances,
whether "f or princes and rich men only," or the hum-
bler and not less familiar "32 Pillars of Strength to
prop up your decaying body for One Rupee 10 only,"
crowd the columns and support the facts.

In the Punjab alone, between December 29, 1922,
and December 4, 1925, Government prosecuted ver-
nacular papers eleven separate times for carrying ultra-
indecent advertisements. In seven cases the publications
were Hindu, thrice Muhammadan, once Sikh. The
fines imposed ranged from twenty-five to two hun-
dred rupees, in one case plus ninety days rigorous im-
prisonment. And it should be duly noted that such
prosecutions are never undertaken save where the ad-
vertisement gives the grossest physical details in plain
and unmistakable language.

Following the eleventh prosecution, Government

10 The market value of the rupee fluctuates with other interna-
tional exchanges. But for the purpose of this book, one rupee is taken
to be worth 33 1/3 cents, three rupees one dollar, United States cur-
rency.

[28]

"SLAVE MENTALITY"

sent out a note to the press informing the editors of
this last conviction with its relatively high fine, and
advising them to scrutinize advertisements before pub-
lication. Upon this suggestion the editorial comment
of the Brahman Samachar 11 emitted an informing
ray:

Government wants that such advertisements should not be
published and that the editors should go through them before
publishing them. It would have been better if the Informa-
tion Bureau had published the obscene advertisement along
with its report so that the subject matter and the manner of
writing of the advertisement would have become known*

Mr. Gandhi in his newspaper has, it is true, re-
corded his disapproving cognizance. "Drugs and me-
chanical contrivances," he writes, "may keep the body
in a tolerable condition, but they sap the mind." 12

But a far more characteristic general attitude was
that evidenced in the recent action of a Hindu of high
position whereby, before giving his daughter in mar-
riage, he demanded from his would-be son-in-law a
British doctor's certificate attesting that he, the would-
be son-in-law, was venereally infected. The explana-
tion is simple: a barren wife casts embarrassment upon
her parents; and barren marriages, although com-
monly laid to the wife, are often due to the husband's
inability. The father in this case was merely taking
practical precaution. He did not want his daughter,
through fault not her own, to be either supplanted or

11 A Hindu paper of Lahore, issue of Feb. 16^ 1926.
12 Young India, Sept. 2, 1926, p. 3091

[29]

MOTHER INDIA

returned upon his hands. And no reproach whatever
attaches to the infected condition. No public opinion
works on the other side.

In case, however, of the continued failure of the
wife any wife to give him a child, the Hindu hus-
band has a last recourse; he may send his wife on a
pilgrimage to a temple, bearing gifts. And, it is af-
firmed, some castes habitually save time by doing this
on the first night after the marriage. At the temple
by day, the woman must beseech the god for a son,
and at night she must sleep within the sacred precincts.
Morning come, she has a tale to tell the priest of
what befell her under the veil of darkness.

"Give praise, O daughter of honor!" he replies. "It
was the god!"

And so she returns to her home.

If a child comes, and it lives, a year later she re-
visits the temple, carrying, with other gifts, the hair
from her child's head. 13

Visitors to the temples today sometimes notice a tree
whose boughs are hung with hundreds of little packets
bound in dingy rags; around the roots of that tree lies
a thick mat of short black locks of human hair. It is
the votive tree of the god. It declares his benefits. To
maintain the honor of the shrine, the priests of this
attribute are carefully chosen from stout new brethren.

Every one, seemingly, understands all about it. The
utmost piety, nevertheless, truly imbues the suppliant's
mind and contents the family.

18 Cf. Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremoifas, pp. 593*4*

"SLAVE MENTALITY"

As to the general subject, enough has now, per-
haps, been said to explain and to substantiate the
Hindu's bitter lament of his own "slave mentality."

It may also suggest why he develops no real or last-
ing leaders, and why such men as from time to time
aspire to that rank are able only for a brief interval to
hold the flitting minds of their followers.

The Indian perceives, to a certain degree, the con-
dition; but he rarely goes all the way to the bottom
thereof. Nor does he recognize its full significance and
relate it to its consequences. "Why do our best men
those who should lead us die so young?" he repeats
despondently, implying that the only possible answer
is: "Karma Kismet an enigmatic fate." "The aver-
age life of our inhabitants is 23 years," says the Hindu
Doctor Hariprasad 14 and lays the blame to bad sank
tation. Another characteristic Indian view is expressed
by Manilal C. Parekh, 15 treating with dismay of the
inroads of tuberculosis an infection that finds ideal
encouragement in the unresisting bodies and depleting
habits of the people:

One need not think just now of the causes of this frightful
increase. . . . The present writer wishes Swaraj to come to
India as early as possible in order that the people of the land
may be able to deal with this tremendously big problem. . . .

Thus they still contrive to shift the burden and avoid
the fact.

14 Young India, Nov. 5, 1925, p. 375.

15 Servants of India, April 8> 1926, jv 124.

[31]

MOTHER INDIA

Yet it was one of the most distinguished of Indian
medical men, a Bombay Brahman, physician and pa-
thologist, who gave me the following appraisal:

My people continually miss the association of their mental
and material poverty with their physical extravagance. Yet
our undeniable race deterioration, our natural lack of power
of concentration, of initiative and of continuity of purpose
cannot be dissociated from our expenditure of all vital energy
on the single line of sexual indulgence.

Once more, then, one is driven to the original con-
clusion: Given men who enter the world physical
bankrupts out of bankrupt stock, rear them through
childhood in influences and practices that devour their
vitality} launch them at the dawn of maturity on an
unrestrained outpouring of their whole provision of
creative energy in one single direction} find them, at
the age when the Anglo-Saxon is just coming into full
glory of manhood, broken-nerved, low-spirited, petu-
lant ancients } and need you, while this remains un-
changed, seek for other reasons why they are poor and
sick and dying and why their hands are too weak, too
fluttering, to seize or to hold the reins of Government?

[321

Chapter III

MARBLES AND TOPS

A study of the attitude of the Government of India
as to the subject of child-marriage shows that, while
steadily exercising persuasive pressure toward progress
and change, it has been dominated, always, by two gen-
eral principles the first, to avoid as far as possible
interference in matters concerning the religion of the
governed} the second, never to sanction a law that can-
not be enforced. To run counter to the Indian's tenets
as to religious duties, religious prohibitions, and god-
given rights has ever meant the eclipse of Indian rea-
son in madness, riot and blood. And to enforce a law
whose keeping or breaking must be a matter of do-
mestic secrecy is, in such a country as India at least,
impossible.

Indian and English authorities unite in the convic-
tion that no law raising the marriage age of girls would
be today effectively accepted by the Hindu peoples.
The utmost to be hoped, in the present state of public
mentality, is, so these experienced men hold, a raising
of the age of consent within the marriage bonds. A
step in this direction was accomplished in 1891, when
Government, backed by certain members of the ad-
vanced section of the Indians, after a hot battle in

[33]

MOTHER INDIA

which it was fiercely accused by eminent orthodox
Hindus of assailing the most sacred foundations of the
Hindu world, succeeded in raising that age from ten
years to twelve. In latter-day Legislative Assemblies
the struggle has been renewed, non-official Indian As-
semblymen bringing forward bills aiming at further
advance only to see them, in one stage or another, de-
feated by the strong orthodox majority.

Upon such occasions, the attitude of the Viceregal
Government has consistently been one of square ap-
proval of the main object in view, but of caution
against the passage of laws so much in advance of
public opinion that their existence can serve only to
bring law itself into disrepute. This course is the more
obligatory because of the tendency of the Indian public
man to satisfy his sense of duty by the mere empty
passing of a law, without thought or intention or ac-
cepted responsibility as to the carrying of his law into
effect.

Not unnaturally, Government's course pleases no
one. From the one side rise accusations of impious de-
sign against the sanctuaries of the faith ; from the other
come charges as bitter but of an opposite implication.

"What right have you to separate man and wife?"
cries an orthodox Brahman Assemblyman. "You may
lay your unholy hands on our ancient ideals and tradi-
tions, but we will not follow you." l Yet, with equal
vehemence a second member declares that "every
Englishman in the Government of India seems to be
* Legislative Assembly Debates, 1925, Vol. V, Part III, p. 2890.

[34]

MARBLES AND TOPS

throwing obstacles in the way of other people going
f orward" f

An examination of these debates gives a fair general
view of the state of public opinion on the whole topic.
Members seem well aware of conditions that obtain.
The divergence comes in the weight they assign to
those conditions.

Rai Bahadur Bakshi Sohan Lai, member from Jul-
lundur, when introducing a non-official amendment to
raise the age of consent within the marriage bond to
fourteen years, argued: 8

The very high rate of fatality amongst the high classes in
this country of newly-born children and of young married
wives is due to sexual intercourse and pregnancy of the girl
before she reaches the age of puberty or full development of
her physical organs. The result of such consummation before
bodily development not only weakens the health of the girl
but often produces children who are weak and sickly, and in
a large number of cases cannot resist any illness of an ordi-
nary type, or any inclemency of weather or climate. Thus
some of them die immediately after birth or during their in-
fancy. If they live at all, they are always in need of medical
attendance, medical advice or medical treatment, to linger on
their lives; or in other words they are born more to minister
to the medical profession than themselves and their families
or their country. Neither can they be good soldiers nor good
civilians, neither good outdoor workers nor good indoor work-
ers; neither can they be fit to attack an enemy nor defend
themselves against attacks of an enemy, or against the raid

/&tVf.,i 9 25,Vol.VI,p. 557.

/Mi, 1922, Vol II, Part III, p, 2650.

[35l

MOTHER INDIA

of thieves or dacoits. 4 In a few words, his birth is very often
the cause of ruining the health, strength and prosperity of his
parents without resulting in a corresponding benefit to society.
The husband, in the majority of cases, . . has to arrange
for his re-marriage several times during his life-time, on ac-
count of the successive deaths of his young wives or on account
of his wife bearing children who are not long-lived.

Successive debates expose the facts that few or none
of the Indian parliamentarians dispute the theoretical
wisdom of postponing motherhood until the maturity
of the mother; but all agree that it is impossible to
effect such a result without prohibiting the marriage of
girls of immature age. Yet this they say, with one
accord, cannot be done and for three reasons:

First, because immutable custom forbids, premari-
tal pubescence being generally considered, among Hin-
dus, a social if not a religious sin. 5

Second, because the father dare not keep his daugh-
ter at home lest she be damaged before she is off his
hands. And this especially in joint-family households,
where several men and boys brothers, cousins, uncles
live under the same roof.

Third, because the parents dare not expose the girl,
after her dawning puberty, to the pressure of her own
desire unsatisfied.

With these intimate dangers in view a learned Brah-
man Assemblyman, Diwan Bahadur T. Rangachariar,
Member from Madras, spoke earnestly against the un-

4 Gang robbers.

5 See Legislative Assembly Debates of 1025. March 23 and 24 in
Vol. V, Part III, and Sept i, in Vol. VI.

[36]

MARBLES AND TOPS

official bill of 1925 raising the age of consent within
the marriage bonds to fourteen years. Any pretense at
enforcing such a law would, it was generally conceded,
demand the keeping of the wife away from her hus-
band, retaining her in her own father's zenana? Said
the Madrassi Assemblyman, warning, imploring: 7

Remember the position of girls in our country between
twelve and fourteen. Have we not got our daughters in our
house? Have we not got our sisters in our house? Remem-
ber that, and remember your own neighbours. Remembering
our habits, remembering our usages, remembering the preco-
ciousness of our youth, remembering the condition of the cli-
mate, remembering the conditions of the country, I ask you
to give your weighty judgment to this matter.

Another Brahman member vehemently protests: 8

The tradition of womanhood in this country is unap-
proached by the tradition of womanhood in any other coun-
try. Our ideal of womanhood is this. Our women regard their
husbands they have been taught from the moment they were
suckling their mothers' milk to regard their husbands as their
God on earth. . . . To the Brahman girl-wife the husband
is a greater, truer, dearer benefactor than all the social re-
formers bundled together! . . . What right have you to in^
terfere with this ancient, noble tradition of ours regarding the
sanctity of wedlock? . . . What is the object of this legiV
lation? Do you want to make the women of India strong and
their children stalwart? But remember that in trying to do

6 Women's quarters.

T Legislative Assembly Debates, 1925, Vol. V, Part III, p. 2884*

8 Ibid ., p. 2890 et seq.

[37]

MOTHER INDIA

that, you may otherwise be doing a lot of evil, far worse than
the evil you seek to remove. ... By all means take care of
[the girPs] body; but fail not to train her morals, to train her
soul, so as to enable her to look upon her husband as her God,
which indeed is the case in India, among Hindus at least.
. . . Don't destroy I beg of you don't ruin our Hindu
Homes.

To reasoning of this sort another member Mr.
Shanmukhan Chetty, of Salem and Coimbatore hotly
retorts: 9

The fact that a so-called marriage rite precedes the com-
mission of a crime does not and cannot justify that crime. I
have no doubt that if you were to ask a cannibal, he would
plead his religion for the heinous act he does.

And Dr. S. K. Datta, Indian Christian representative
from Calcutta: 10

If ever there was "a man-made law," this compulsion of
young girls to become mothers is one of them.

The bill raising the age of consent to fourteen was
finally thrown out, buried under an avalanche of popu-
lar disapproval. In the next Assembly Sir Alexander
Muddiman, leader of the Viceroy's Government,
brought in an official bill drafted with a view of break-
ing the impasse and securing that degree of advance
that would be conceded by the conservative Indian
element- This bill, fixing the woman's age of consent

9 Legislative Assembly Debates, 1925, Vol. VI, p. 558.
., 1925, Vol. V, Part III, p. 2839.

[38]

MARBLES AND TOPS

within and without the marriage bond respectively at
thirteen and fourteen years, was enacted into law as
Act XXIX of 1925.

The discussion that it evoked on the floor of the
Assembly gave still further light upon the attitude of
Indians.

Some speakers pointed to the gradual growth of
public opinion as expressed in caste, party and associa-
tion councils as the best hope of the future. These
deprecated legislation as both irritating and useless,
calling attention to the fact that the orthodox commu-
nity, comprising as it does the great majority of Hin-
dus all over India, would regard legal abolition of
child-marriage as, literally, a summons to a holy war.

Similarly, any active attempt to protect the child-
wife during her infancy would, it was shown, be held
as an attack upon the sacred marital relation, impos-
sible to make effective and sure to let loose "bloodshed
and chaos."

Rai Sahib M. Harbilas Sarda, of Ajmer-Merwara
maintained, it is true, that u

where a social custom or a religious rite outrages our sense
of humanity or inflicts injustice on a helpless class of people,
the Legislature has a right to step in. Marrying a girl of three
or four years and allowing sexual intercourse with a girl of
nine or ten years outrages the sense of humanity anywhere,

But Pundit Madan Mohan Malaviya, of Allahabad!
thought differently, saying: "

Ibid., 1925, Vol. VI, p. 561.
Ibid., pp. 573-4-

[39]

MOTHER INDIA

I have to face the stern realities of the situation, realities
which include a general permission or rather a widespread
practice of having marriages performed before twelve and
consequently of the impossibility of preventing a married
couple from meeting. * . . I submit that it is perhaps best
that we should reconcile ourselves to leave the law as it is in
the case of married people for the present, and to trust to the
progress of education and to social reform to raise the age of
consummation of marriage to the proper level. . . . I am
sure, Sir, that a great deal of advance has been made in this
matter. In many provinces among the higher classes the mar-
riageable age has been rising. ... It is the poorer classes
who unfortunately are the greatest victims in this matter.
Early marriages take place among the poorer classes in a
larger measure than among the higher classes.

And Mr. Amar Nath Dutt, of Burdwan, combated
the action proposed, thus: 18

We have no right to thrust our advanced views upon our
less advanced countrymen. . . . Our villages are torn with
factions. If the age of consent is raised to 13, rightly or
wrongly we will find that there will be inquisitions by the
police at the instance of members of an opposite faction in
the village and people will be put to disgrace and trouble.
... I would ask [Government] ... to withdraw the Bill
at once. Coming as I do, Sir, from Bengal, I know what is
the opinion of the majority of the people there.

Mr. M. K. Acharya, of South Arcot, also strongly
adverse to change, declared that 14

18 Legislative Assembly Debates, 1925, Vol. VI, pp. 558-9.
"Ibid., p. 551.

[40]

MARBLES AND TOPS

. . . what is sought to be done is to make that an offence
which is not an offence now, to make that a crime which is
not at present a crime, and which we are unable to regard as
a crime, whatever may be the feelings of some few people
to the contrary.

To which the same speaker added, a few moments
later: 15

There is very little opinion of any respectable body of men
in India which wants this reform very urgently. It may come,
and there is no harm in it, in its own course. Really this is
. . . merely to give Honourable Members some legislative
marbles and tops to play with during the time that we happen
to be in Simla. 18

16 Ibid, p. 556.

16 Simla is the summer seat of the Central Government.

Chapter IV

EARLY TO MARRY AND EARLY TO DIE

Upon the unfruitful circlings of the Hindus breaks,
once and again, a voice from the hardy North. Rarely,
for the subject carries small interest there } yet, when
it comes, weighted with rough acumen.

Nawab Sir Sahibzada Abdul Qaiyum is, as his name
suggests, a Muhammadan. Speaking as of the distant
North-West Frontier Province, he said: x

I should like to say only a few words on the practical side
of it. In my part of the country, we do not have early mar-
riages. So the Bill is not likely to affect us very much. . . .
I should have thought . . . the proper remedy . . . fixing
the age of marriage for a man at a certain point and for a
woman at another point . . . [but] I do not think the coun-
try is prepared. . . . Well, just consider: Who is going to
be the prosecutor, who is going to be the investigator, who arc
going to be the witnesses, and who is going to enforce the
verdict? . . . Then there is another difficulty . . . that you
allow a young couple to be married and to live together and
give them the opportunity of sharpening their sexual appetite
and then prevent them by law from having their natural in-
tercourse simply because they have not reached a certain age.
. . P Well, suppose this law is enacted, and the young couple
are prevented from having intercourse, I should think that in

1 Legislative Assembly Debates, 1925, Vol. VI, PJK, 571-2.

[42]

EARLY TO MARRY AND EARLY TO DIE

the majority of cases you would thus be sending the young
boy into the streets . . . but so long as you allow people to
be married young, there is no sufficient reason why you should
enact laws which may interfere with their private life.

The handling of child-wives, many finally affirm,
must, regardless of legal enactment, continue to be
guided by natural instincts under the husbands' sacred
rights.

Throughout the Hindu argument, however, the
general conviction appears that law-making for social
advance, while entirely hopeless of enforcement, exerts
an educational influence upon the community and is
therefore to be regarded with satisfaction as a com-
pleted piece of work. "The people should be educated,"
the Indian public man declares. "They should follow
the course that I hereby indicate." Having spoken, he
washes his hands. His task is done.

The voice of Diwan Bahadur T. Rangachariar, the
Madrassi Brahman Assemblyman before quoted, was
one of the few raised in criticism of this characteristic
viewpoint. Addressing a fellow Assemblyman, pro-
ponent of the reform amendment, he says: 2

May I ask my Honourable friend how many platforms he
has addressed in this connection outside this hall? (A voice:
"Never.") Has he ever summoned a meeting in his own prov-
ince and addressed the people on the value of these reforms?
Sir, it is easy to avail yourself of the position which you oc-
cupy here appealing to an audience where all are wedded to

*lbid. t 1925, Vol. V, Part III, p. 2847.

[43]

MOTHER INDIA

your views and to get them to aid in this legislation. But . . .
it is not so easy a task to go to the country and convince your
own countrymen and countrywomen.

Thus throughout these councils, the weight of re-
sponsibility tosses back and forth, a beggar for lodg-
ment. "It is only the Brahmans who marry their girls
in infancy." Or, equally, "It is only the low castes that
follow such practice"} and, "In any case the evils of
early marriages are much exaggerated, interference is
unwise, and volunteer social and religious reform asso-
ciations may be trusted to protect young wives."

But, turning from the shifts and theories of politi-
cians from their vague affirmations of progress at-
tained, to cold black and white you are pulled up
with a jerk. Says the latest Census of India: s

It can be assumed for all practical purposes that every
woman is in the married state at or immediately after pu-
berty and that cohabitation, therefore, begins in every case
with puberty.

And the significance of the thing is further driven
home by the estimate that in India each generation sees
the death of 3,200,000 mothers in the agonies of child-
birth 4 a figure greater than that of the united death-
roll of the British Empire, including India, France,
Belgium, Italy and the United States, in the World
War} and that the average physical rating of the popu-
lation is at the bottom of the international list.

8 Census of India, 1921, Appendix VII.

* Legislative Assembly Debates, 1922, VoL III, Part I, p. 882.

[44]

EARLY TO MARRY AND EARLY TO DIE

To turn again to the Legislative Assembly: Once
more, it is a man from the North who speaks a gray-
beard yeoman, tall, straight, lean and sinewy, hard as
nails, a telling contrast to the Southerners around him
who jeer as he talks Sardar Bahadur Captain Hira
Singh Brar, of the Punjab, old Sikh fighting man. 5

I think, Sir, the real solution for preventing infant mor-
tality lies in smacking the parent who produces such children,
and more so, in slapping many of our friends who always
oppose the raising of the age to produce healthy children. . . .
Is it not a sin when they call a baby of nine or ten years or
a boy of ten years husband and wife? It is a shame. (Voices:
"No, no!") ... a misfortune for this generation and for
the future generation. . . . Girls of nine or ten, babies
themselves who ought to be playing with their dolls rather
than becoming wives, are mothers of children. Boys who
ought to be getting their lessons in school are rearing a large
family of half a dozen boys and girls. ... I do not like
to go into society. I feel ashamed, because there is no man-
hood, there is no womanhood. I should feel ashamed myself
to go into society with a little girl of twelve years as my
wife. . . . We all talk, talk and talk a hundred and one
things here, but what happens? All left in this House, all
left on the platform and nothing carried to our homes, noth-
ing happens. . . . Healthy children are the foundation of a
strong nation. Every one knows that the parents cannot pro-
duce healthy children. To be useful we must have long life
which we cannot have if early marriage is not stopped.
"Early to marry and early to die," is the motto of Indians.

Ibid., 1925, Vol. V, Part III, pp. 2829-31.

MOTHER INDIA

The frank give-and-takes of the Indian Legislature,
between Indian and Indian, deal with facts. But it is
instructive to observe the robes that those facts can
wear when arrayed by a poet for foreign considera-
tion. Rabindranath Tagore, in a recent essay on "The
Indian Ideal of Marriage," explains child-marriage as
a flower of the sublimated spirit, a conquest over sexu-
ality and materialism won by exalted intellect for the
eugenic uplift of the race. His explanation, however,
logically implies the assumption, simply, that Indian
women must be securely bound and delivered before
their womanhood is upon them, if they are to be kept
in hand. His words are : 6

The "desire" . . . against which India's solution of the
marriage problem declared war, is one of Nature's most pow-
erful fighters; consequently, the question of how to overcome
it was not an easy one. There is a particular age, said India, at
which this attraction between the sexes reaches its height; so
if marriage is to be regulated according to the social will [as
distinguished from the choice of the individual concerned], it
must be finished with before such age. Hence the Indian cus-
tom of early marriage.

In other words, a woman must be married before
she knows she is one.

Such matter as this, coming as it does from one of
the most widely known of modern Indian writers, may
serve to suggest that we of the "material-minded
West" shall be misled if we too quickly accept the Ori-

e The Book of Marriage, Keyserling, Harcourt, Brace & Co., New
York, 1926, p. 112.

EARLY TO MARRY AND EARLY TO DIE

ental's phrases as making literal pictures of the daily
Jiuman life of which he seems to speak.

All thus far written here concerns the fate of chil-
dren within the marriage bond. The general subject of
prostitution in India need not enter the field of this
bookj but certain special aspects thereof may be cited
because of the compass bearings that they afford.

In some parts of the country, more particularly in
the Presidency of Madras and in Orissa, a custom ob-
tains among the Hindus whereby the parents, to per-
suade some favor from the gods, may vow their next
born child, if it be a girl, to the gods. Or, a particularly
lovely child, for one reason or another held superflu-
ous in her natural surroundings, is presented to the
temple. The little creature, accordingly, is delivered to
the temple women, her predecessors along the route,
for teaching in dancing and singing. Often by the age
of five, when she is considered most desirable, she be-
comes the priests' own prostitute.

If she survives to later years she serves as a dancer
and singer before the shrine in the daily temple wor-
ship} and in the houses around the temple she is held
always ready, at a price, for the use of men pilgrims
during their devotional sojourns in the temple pre-
cincts. She now goes beautifully attired, often loaded
with the jewels of the gods, and leads an active life
until her charms fade. Then, stamped with the mark of
the god under whose asgis she has lived, she is turned
out upon the public, with a small allowance and with
the acknowledged right to a beggar's livelihood. Her

[47]

MOTHER INDIA

parents, who may be well-to-do persons of good rank
and caste, have lost no face at all by the manner of
their disposal of her. Their proceeding, it is held, was
entirely reputable. And she and her like form a sort of
caste of their own, are called devadassis, or "prosti-
tutes of the gods," and are a recognized essential of
temple equipment. 7

Now, if it were asked how a responsible Govern-
ment permits this custom to continue in the land, the
answer is not far to seek. The custom, like its back-
ground of public sentiment, is deep-rooted in the far
past of an ultra-conservative and passionately religiose
people. Any one curious as to the fierceness with which
it would be defended by the people, both openly and
covertly, and in the name of religion, against any
frontal attack, will find answer in the extraordinary
work 8 and in the too-reticent books 9 of Miss Amy
Wilson-Carmichael.

A province could be roused to madness by the for-
cible withdrawal of girl-children from the gods.

"You cannot hustle the East." But the underground
workings of western standards and western contacts,
and the steady, quiet teachings of the British official
through the years have done more, perhaps, toward
ultimate change than any coercion could have effected.

Thus, when one measure came before the Legislative
Assembly to raise the age of consent outside the mar-

T Cf . The Golden Bough, J. G. Frazer, Macmillan & Co., London,
1914. Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Vol. I, pp. 61-5.
8 In Dohnavur, Tinnevelly District, South India.
Lotus Buds, Things As They Are, etc., Morgan & Scott, London.

[48]

EARLY TO MARRY AND EARLY TO DIE

riage bond it was vigorously resisted by that conspicu-
ous member, the then Rao Bahadur T. Rangachariar.
His argument was, that such a step would work great
Aardships to the temple prostitutes.

And why?

Because, as he explained, the daughters of the deva-
dassis cannot be married to caste husbands j so, 10

as these girls cannot find wedlock, the mothers arrange with
a certain class of Zemindars big landlords that they should
be taken into alliance with the Zemindar.

And the sympathetic legislator goes on in warning
that if the girl's age is raised, no zemindar will desire
her, with the result that a good bargain is lost and the
child is planted on her poor mother's hands.

But the interesting point in the debate is not the
eminent Brahman's voicing of the mass-sentiment of
his people, but the opposition that his words call forth
from the seats around him, which are almost at one
in their disapproval of an argument that, a generation
earlier, would have met another reception.

Then followed the member from Orissa, Mr. Misra,
with his views on devadassis or ordinary dassis or pros-
titutes: "

They have existed from time immemorial. . . . They are
regarded as a necessity even for marriage and other parties,
and for singing songs in invocation of God. . . . Much has
been said about girls being disposed of to Zemindars and

10 Legislative Assembly Debates, 1923, Vol. Ill, Part IV, pp. 2807-8.
*., pp. 2826-7.

[49]

MOTHER INDIA

Rajas. 11 , . . Zemindars never get any girls from procurers.
What happens is this. When Zemindars or Rajas marry, their
wives or Ranis bring with them some girls as maid servants.
. . . Such a thing as procuring of girls does not exist and no
gentleman, whether he be a Zemindar or a Raja or an ordi-
nary man, would ever adopt such a nefarious means to pro-
cure girls. . . . Why should we think so much about these
people [minor girls] who are able to take care of them-
selves?

Mr. Misra's speech, although it dealt with simple
facts, evoked another manifestation of western influ-
ence, in that it definitely jarred upon many of his co-
legislators. However true, they did not want it spread
in the record. Cries of "Withdraw!" repeatedly inter-
rupted him, and the words of other speakers gave
ample proof of stirrings, intellectually, at least, of a
new perception in the land.

To translate intellectual perception into concrete act
requires yet another subversive mental process, in a
people whose religion teaches that freedom from all
action is the crown of perfect attainment.

11 A Hindr title, inferior to Maharaja.

[50]

Chapter V

SPADES ARE SPADES

To visualize the effects of child-marriage as outlined
by the legislators just quoted, one of the most direct
means that the foreigner in India can take is to visit
women's hospitals. This I have done from the Punjab
to Bombay, from Madras to the United Provinces.
This a man can scarcely do, for the reason that, doctor
or not, he will rarely be admitted to the sight of a
woman patient.

In one of the cities of the northeast is a little
furdah x hospital of great popularity among Indian
women. The timid creatures who crowd it are often
making thereby their first excursion outside the walls
of their own homes, nor would they have ventured now
save for the pain that drove them. Muhammadans
always, Hindus often, arrive in purdah conveyances
hidden in curtained carriages, or in little close-draped
boxes barely high enough to hold their crouching
bodies, swinging on a pole between bearers like bales
of goods. Government clerks' wives they are, wives of
officials or of professional men, rich women sometimes,
sometimes poor, women of high caste, women of low
caste too desperate, all, for the help they are dying

1 The seclusion of women as in a harem.

[51]

MOTHER INDIA

for, to set up against themselves their cherished bars
of religious hatreds and caste repulsions.

The hospital consists of a series of little one-story
bungalows, partly in wards, partly in single rooms. At
the start, years ago, it was slow business getting the
women to come; the first season producing a total of
nine midwifery cases. But now every bed is full, even
the verandas are crowded with cots, and women by
scores, for whom there is no space, are pleading for
admission.

Walking down the aisles you see, against the white
plane of the pillows, dark faces of the non-Aryan
stock, lighter faces of Brahmans, fine-cut faces of the
northern Persian-Muhammadan strain, coarse faces of
the South, all alike looking out from behind a common
veil of helplessness and pain. Most of the work, here,
is gynecological. Most of the women are very young.
Almost all are venereally affected.

Some come because they are childless, begging for
either medicine or an operation to give them the one
thing that buys an Indian wife a place in the sun.
"Among such," says the British surgeon-superintend-
ent, "we continually find that the patient has had one
child, often dead, and that then she has been infected
with gonorrhea, which has utterly destroyed the pelvic
organs. The number of young girls that come here, so
destroyed in their first years of married life, is appal-
ling. Ninety per cent, of the pelvic inflammation is of
gonorrheal origin.

"Here," she continues, as we stop at the bedside of

03

SPADES ARE SPADES

a young girl who looks up at us with the eyes of a
hungry animal, "here is a new patient. She has had
several children, all still-born. This time, because her
husband will no longer keep her unless she bears him
a living child, she has come to us for confinement. As
usual, it is a venereal case. But I hope we can help
her."

"And what about this one?" I ask, pausing by an-
other cot in inward revolt against the death-stricken
look on the young face before us.

"That/' answers the doctor, "is the wife of a Hindu
official. He brought her to us three days ago, in the
very onset of her second confinement, because, by the
first, she had failed to give him a living child. Also
she is suffering from heart-disease, asthma and a
broken leg! I had to set her leg and confine her at
practically one and the same time. It was a forceps
case. Dead twins. She, too, is an internal wreck, from
infection, and can never give birth again. But that she
does not yet knowj I think it would kill her if she
heard it now.

"Her age? Thirteen and a few months."

"Now what can be wrong here?" I inquire, catch-
ing the smile of a wan-faced child whose bird's-daw
hands are clasped around a paper toy.

*Ah!" says the doctor, "this one was a pupil in a
Government primary school, a merry wee thing, and
so bright that she had just won a prize for scholarship.
During the holiday five months ago her brother sent
her home to the man to whom they had married her.

l53l

MOTHER INDIA

That man is fifty years old. From their point of vie*
he is a Hindu gentleman beyond reproach. From our
point of view he is a beast. . . . What happened, this
mite was too terrified to tell. For weeks she grew
worse and worse. At last she went completely off her
head. Then her sister, an old patient of ours, stole her
away and dragged her here.

"I have never seen a creature so fouled. Her internal
wounds were alive with maggots. For days after she
got here, she lay speechless on her bed. Not a sound
did she utter only stared, with half blank, half ter-
ror-stricken eyes. Then one day it chanced that a child
with a fractured arm was brought in and put in a bed
near hers. And I, going through the ward, began play-
ing with that child. This little one, watching, evidently
began to think that here, perhaps, we were not all cruel
monsters. Next day as I passed, she smiled. The day
after that she put her arms around my neck, in a sort
of maudlin fashion. That was the turning point in her
mind. Now her mental balance is mending, though her
body is still sick. Her memory, fortunately, has not
recovered the immediate past. She lies there with her
toys, wondering at them, feebly playing with them, or
with her big eyes following our movements about the
room. She is pitifully content.

"Meantime her husband is suing her to recover his
marital rights and force her back into his possession.
She is not yet thirteen years old."

Such instances of mental derangement are common
enough. Where should child-fabric, even though its

[54]

SPADES ARE SPADES

inheritance had been the best instead of the weakest,
find strength to withstand the strain? The case last
cited was of well-to-do, educated, city-dwelling stock.
But it differed in no essential from that of a younger
child whom I saw in a village some three hundred
miles distant. Married as a baby, sent to her husband at
ten, the shock of incessant use was too much for her
brain. It went. After that, beat her as he would, all
that she could do was to crouch in the corner, a little
twisted heap, panting. Not worth the keep. And so at
last, in despair and rage over his bad bargain, he slung
her small body over his shoulder, carried her out to
the edge of the jungle, cast her in among the scrub
thicket, and left her there to die.

This she must have done, but that an Indian witness
to the deed carried the tale to an English lady who her-
self went out into the jungle, found the child, and
brought her in. Her mind, they said, was slow in
emerging from its stupor. But under the influence of
peace and gentleness and the handling proper to a
child, she began at last to blossom into normal intelli-
gence. When I first saw her, a year and four months
after her abandonment, she was racing about a pleasant
old garden, romping with other happy little children,
and contentedly hugging a doll. Her English pro-
tectors will keep her as long as they can. After that,
what?

Except well to the north, the general condition thus
indicated is found in most sections of India. Bombay
Presidency has an outstanding number of educated and

[55]

MOTHER INDIA

progressive women, but the status of the vast majority
in that province, as in the rest, would more fairly be
inferred from the other extreme from, for example,
the wife whom I saw, mother at nine and a half, by
Caesarean operation, of a boy weighing one and three-
quarter pounds.

Strike off across the peninsula, a thousand miles east
of Bombay, and you have the same story. "What can
be hoped from these infant wives?" says the superin-
tendent of a hospital here a most competent and de-
voted British lady doctor. "Their whole small stock of
vitality is exhausted in the first pregnancy. Thence they
go on, repeating the strain with no chance whatever of
building up strength to give to the children that come
so fast. A five-pound baby is large. In the neighbor-
hood of four is the usual weight. Many are born deadj
and all, because of their low vitality, are predisposed to
any and every infection that may come along. My
patients, here, are largely the wives of University stu-
dents. Practically every one is venereally infected.
When I first came out to India, I tried going to the
parents of each such case to tell them of their daugh-
ter's state, in the hope that they would act in her be-
half. But when I found that they had known the hus-
band's diseased condition before giving their daughter
in nj^rriage, and could still see neither shame nor harm
therein, I gave up the attempt. They do not look on it
as an inconvenience, nor will they give weight to the
fact that they are passing on a vile thing to the chil-
dren.

[56]

SPADES ARE SPADES

"Now my question is, whether, in view of the
chronic inadequacy of our hospital funds, I am right in
giving the cure to these patients. It costs about twenty
rupees ($6.66), and the woman is reinfected the day
she returns to her own home. I could do so many
other things with those precious twenty rupees!. And
yet "

Again, in the great Madras Presidency, east or west,
the tale is no better. "For the vast majority of women
here," says a widely experienced surgeon, "marriage is
a physical tragedy. The girl may bring to birth one or
two sound children, but is by that time herself ruined
and crippled, either from infection or cruel handling.
In the thousands of gynecological cases that I have
treated and am still treating, I have never found one
woman who had not some form of venereal disease."

In other provinces of India, other medical men and
women, European and western-educated Indian alike,
gave me ample corroborative statements as to the ef-
fects of child motherhood. On the mother's part, in-
creased predisposition to tuberculosis j displacement of
organs} softening of immature bones, due to weight
on spine and pelvis, presently causing disastrous ob-
structions to birth} hysteria and pathological mental
derangements} stunting of mental and physical growth.

"A very small percentage of Indian women seem to
me to be well and strong," adds a woman physician of
wide present-day Indian experience. "This state I be-
lieve to be accounted for by a morbid and unawakened
mentality, by venereal infection, and by sexual ex-

[57]

MOTHER INDIA

haustion. They commonly experience marital use two
and three times a day."

Thirty-six years ago, when the Age of Consent
bill was being argued in the Indian Legislating all the
women doctors then working in India united to lay
before the Viceroy a memorial and petition for the
relief of those to whose help their own lives were
dedicated. Affirming that they instanced only ordinary
cases cases taken from the common personal practice
of one or another of their own number they give as
follows the conditions in which certain patients first
came into their hands: a

A. Aged 9. Day after marriage. Left femur dislocated,
pelvis crushed out of shape. Flesh hanging in shreds.

B. Aged 10. Unable to stand, bleeding profusely, flesh
much lacerated.

C. Aged 9. So completely ravished as to be almost be-
yond 5 surgical repair. Her husband had two other living wives
and spoke very fine English.

I. Aged about 7. Living with husband. Died in great
agony after three days.

M. Aged about 10. Crawled to hospital on her hands and
knees. Has never been able to stand erect since her marriage*

The original list is longer than here given. It will
be found in the appendix of this book. 8

This was in 1891. In 1922, the subject being again
before the Indian Legislature, this same petition of the

a Le^lttitvt Assembly Debates. 1922, Vol. Ill, Part I, pp> 881-3, asut
*f*ie Appendix L

[58]

SPADES A&E SPADES

women surgeons was once more brought forward as
equally applicable after the lapse of years. No one dis-
puted, no one can yet dispute, its continued force. The
Englishman who now introduced it into the debate
could not bring himself to read its text aloud. But, re-
ferring to the bill raising the Age of Consent then
under discussion, he concluded his speech thus:

A number of persons . . have said that this Bill is likely
to give rise to agitation. No one dislikes agitation more than
I do. I am sick of agitation. But when, Sir, it is a case of the
lives of women and children, I can only say, in the words
of the Duke of Wellington: "Agitate and be damned!"

In a recent issue of his weekly paper, Young India?
Mr. Gandhi printed an article over his own name en-
titled "Curse of Child Marriage." Said Mr. Gandhi:

It is sapping the vitality of thousands of our promising
boys and girls on whom the future of our society entirely
rests.

It is bringing into existence every year thousands of weak-
lings both boys and girls who are born of immature par-
enthood.

It is a very fruitful source of appalling child-mortality and
still-births that now prevail in our society.

It is a very important cause of the gradual and steady de-
cline of Hindu society in point of (i) numbers, (2) physical
strength and courage, and (3) morality.

Not less interesting than the article itself is the reply
that it quickly elicits from an Indian correspondent

4 Young India, August 26, 1926, p. 302.

[59]

MOTHER INDIA

whom Mr, Gandhi himself vouches for as "a man occu-
pying a high position in society." This correspondent
writes: 5

I am very much pained to read your article on "Curse of
Child Marriage." . . .

I fail to understand why you could not take a charitable
view of those whose opinion differs from you. ... I think
it improper to say that those who insist on child marriage are
"steeped in vice." . . .

The practice of early marriage is not confined to any prov-
ince or class of society, but is practically a universal custom
in India. . . .

The chief objection to early marriage is that it weakens the
health of the girl and her children. But this objection is not
very convincing for the following reasons. The age of mar-
riage is now rising among the Hindus, but the race is becom-
ing weaker. Fifty or a hundred years ago the men and women
were generally stronger, healthier and more long-lived than
now. But early marriage was then more in vogue. . . . From
these facts it appears probable that early marriage does not
cause as much physical deterioration as some people be-
lieve. . . .

The type of logic employed in the paragraph last
quoted is so essentially Indian that its character should
not be passed by without particular note. The writer
sees no connection between the practice of the grand-
parents and the condition of the grandchildren, even
though he sets both down in black and white on the
paper before him.

B Young India, Sept. 9, 1926, p. 318.

[60]

SPADES ARE SPADES

A voice in the wilderness, Mr. Gandhi continues the
attack, printing still further correspondence drawn
forth by his original article. He gives the letter of a
Bengali Hindu lady, who writes: 6

I don't know how to thank you for your speaking on be-
half of the poor girl-wives of our Hindu society. . . . Our
women always bear their burden of sorrow, in silence, with
meekness. They have no power left in them to fight against
any evil whatever.

To this Mr. Gandhi rejoins by adducing from his
own knowledge instances in support, such as that of a
sixty-year-old educationalist, who, without loss of pub-
lic respect, has taken home a wife of nine years. But he
ends on a rare new note, arraigning India's western-
taught women who spend their energies in politics,
publicity-seeking, and empty talk, to the utter neglect
of the crucial work for India that only they can do: f

May women always throw the blame on men and salve
their consciences? . . . They may fight, if they like, for
votes for women. It costs neither time nor trouble. It pro-
vides them with innocent recreation. But where are the brave
women who work among the girl-wives and girl-widows, and
who would take no rest and leave none for men, till girl-
marriage became an impossibility?

It has been the habit, in approaching these matters,
to draw a veil before their nakedness and pass quickly

Ibid., Oct 7, 1926, p. 349.
Ubid.

[61]

MOTHER INDIA

by. Searching missionaries' reports for light out of
their long experience, one finds neat rows of dots,
marking the silent tombs of the indecorous. For the
missionary is thinking, first, of the dovecotes at home
whence his money comes, and on whose sitting-room
tables his report will be laidj and, second, of the super-
sensitive Indians on whose sufferance he depends for
whatever measure of success he may attain. Again, lay-
men who know the facts have written around rather
than about them, swathing the spot in euphemisms,
partly to avoid the Indian's resentment at being held
up to a disapproval whose grounds he can neither feel
nor understand, partly out of respect to the occidental
reader's taste.

Yet, to suppress or to veil the bare truth is, in cases
such as this, to belie it. For few western readers, with-
out plain telling, spade by spade, will imagine the con-
ditions that exist

Given, then, a constructive desire really to under-
stand India's problems, it is merely what Mr. Gandhi
calls "self-deception, the worst of sins/' to beg off
from facing the facts in these fundamental aspects of
Indian life. And if any one is inclined to bolt the
task, let him stop to consider whether he has a right
so to humor himself, a right to find it too hard even
to speak or to hear of things that millions of little
children, and of women scarcely more than children*
are this very day enduring in their tormented flesh.

PART II

Interlude

THE GRAND TRUNK ROAD

The Grand Trunk Road, at the Khyber. Black, bar-
ren, jagged hills scowl into the chasm that cleaves
them. Tribesmen's villages on either side each house
in itself a f ortalice, its high fighting towers surrounded
by high, blind walls loop-holed for rifles.

"What is your calling?" you ask the master. "What
but the calling of my people? " says he. "We are
raiders."

They may not shoot across the road, it being the
highway of the King-Emperor. But on either side they
shoot as they please, the country being their country.
Their whole life is war, clan on clan, house on house,
man on man, yet, for utter joy, Muslim on Hindu.
Hills are bare, food is scarce, and the delight of life
is stalking human prey, excelling its cunning.

Two miles of camels, majestic, tail to nose, nose to
tail, bearing salt, cotton and sugar from India to Asia,
swinging gloriously past two miles of camels, nose to
tail, tail to nose, bearing the wares of Asia into India.
Armed escorts of Afridi soldiers. Armed posts. Fre-
quent roadside emplacements for three or four sharp-
shooters with rifles. Barbed wire entanglements.
Tribesmen afoot, hawk-nosed, hawk-eyed, carrying
two rifles apiece, taking the lay of the land on the

[65]

MOTHER INDIA

off-chance. Tramp tramp a marching detachment
of the 2nd Battalion Royal Fusiliers optn-faced,
bright-skinned English lads, smart and keen an in-
credible sight in that setting. Yet because of them and
them only may the Hindu today venture the Khyber.
Until the Pax Britannica reached so far, few Hindus
came through alive, unless mounted and clad as women.

The Grand Trunk Road rolls South and South a
broad, smooth river of peace whose waves are un-
thinking humanity. Monkeys of many sorts play along
its sides. Peacocks. Deer. Herds of camels shepherded
by little naked boys entirely competent. Dust of traffic.
White bullocks, almond-eyed, string upon string of
sky-blue beads twisted around their necks and horns,
pulling wains heaped high with cotton for Japan. Vil-
lages villages villages true homes of India, scat-
tered, miles apart, across the open country. Each just
a handful of mud-walled huts clustered beside the
hole they took the mud from, now half full of stag-
nant water in which they wash and bathe and quench
their thirst. In villages such as these live nine-tenths
of all the peoples of India. Hindu or Muhammadan
alike hard-working cultivators of the soil, simple,
illiterate, peaceful, kindly, save when men steal
amongst them carrying fire.

Sunset. The ghost of a ghost a thin long veil of
blue, floating twice a man's height above the earth.
Softly it widens, deepens, till all the air is blue and
the tall tree-trunks and the stars themselves show blue
behind it. Now conies its breath a biting tang of

1661

flwlo by M. Moyca Newell

HINDU MOTHER AND CHILD
She feeds it opium when it cries

THE GRAND TRUNK ROAD

smoke the smoke of all the hearth-fires in all the vil-
lages. And this is the hour, this the incense, this the
invocation of Mother India, walking among the tree-
trunks in the twilight, veiled in the smoke of the
hearth-fires of her children, her hands outstretched in
entreaty, blue stars shining in her hair.

For the rest, the Grand Trunk is just Kim. Read
it again, for all of it is true. Zam Zammah still stands
in Lahore. Mahbub Ali died three years ago, but his
two boys are in England at sdiool. And the Old
Lady still travels in her bullock-cart, scolding shrilly
through her curtains into the clouds of dust.

[67]

Chapter VI

THE EARTHLY GOD

A beautiful Rolls-Royce of His Highness's sending
was whirling us along the road from the Guest House
to the Palace. My escort, one of the chief officials of
the Prince's household, a high-caste orthodox Brah-
man scholar easily at home in his European dress, had
already shown readiness to converse and to explain.

"Let us suppose," I now asked him, "that you have
an infant daughter. At what age will you marry her?"

<c At five at seven but I must surely marry her,"
he replied in his excellent English, "before she com-
pletes her ninth year."

"And if you do not, what is the penalty, and upon
whom does it fall?"

"It falls upon me} I am outcasted by my caste.
None of them will eat with me or give me water to
drink or admit me to any ceremony. None will give
me his daughter to marry my son, so that I can have
no son's son of right birth. I shall have, in fact, na
further social existence. No fellow caste-man will even
lend his shoulder to carry my body to the burning-
ghat. And my penance in the next life will be heavier
still than this."

"Then as to the child herself, what would befall
her?"

F681

THE EARTHLY GOD

"The child? Ah, yes. According to our law I must
turn her out of my house and send her into the forest
alone. There I must leave her with empty hands.
Thenceforth I may not notice her in any way. Nor
may any Hindu give her food or help from the wild
beasts, on penalty of sharing the curse."

"And would you really do that thing?"

"No; for the reason that occasion would not arise.
I could not conceivably commit the sin whose conse-
quence it is."

It was noticeable that in this picture the speaker saw
no suffering figure save his own.

A girl child, in the Hindu scheme, is usually a heavy
and unwelcome cash liability. Her birth elicits the for-
mal condolences of family friends. But not always
would one find so ingenuous a witness as that pros-
perous old Hindu landowner who said to me: "I have
had twelve children. Ten girls, which, naturally, did
not live. Who, indeed, could have borne that burden!
The two boys, of course, I preserved."

Yet Sir Michael O'Dwyer records a similar instance
of open speech from his own days of service as Settle-
ment Commissioner in Bharatpur: *

The sister of the Maharaja was to be married to a great
Punjab Sirdar. The family pressed [the Maharaja being a
minor] for the lavish expenditure usual on those occasions *
30,000 to 40,000 and the local members of the State
Council supported their view. The Political Agent the State

1 India As I Knew It, Sir Michael O'Dwyer, Constable & Co., Ltd-
London, 1925, p. 102.

[69]

MOTHER INDIA

being then under British supervision and I strongly pro-
tested against such extravagance in a year of severe scarcity
and distress. Finally, the matter was discussed in full Council.
I asked the oldest member of the Council to quote precedents
how much had been sanctioned on similar marriages of the
daughter or sister of a Maharaja in the past. He shook his
head and said there was no precedent. I said, "How can that
be? the State has been in existence over two hundred years,
and there have been eleven successions without adoption, from
father to son; do you mean to tell me that there were never
any daughters?" The old man hesitated a little, and then said,
"Sahib, you know our customs, surely you know the reason.
There were daughters born, but till this generation they were
not allowed to grow up." And it was so.

But it is fair to remember that infanticide has been
common not with primitive races only 'but with Greece,
with Rome, with nearly all peoples known to history
save those who have been affected by Christian or
Muhammadan culture. Forbidden in India by Imperial
law, the ancient practice, so easily followed in secret,
seems still to persist in many parts of the country. 2

Statistical proof in such matters is practically unat-
tainable, as will be realized later in this chapter. But
the statement of the Superintendent of the United
Provinces Census 8 regarding girl children of older
growth is cautious enough to avoid all pitfalls:

I very much doubt whether there is any active dislike of

2 See Census of India, Vol. I, Part I, 1921, Appendix VI. See also
The Punjab Peasant in Prosperity and Debt, M. L. Darling, Oxford,
1925. PP- 58-9.
" 8 Census of India, 1911. Vol. XV, p. 190.

[70]

THE EARTHLY COD

girl babies. . . . But if there is no active dislike, there is
unquestionably passive neglect. "The parents look after the
son, and God looks after the daughter." The daughter is less
warmly clad, she receives less attention when ill, and less and
worse food when well. This is not due to cruelty, or even to
indifference 5 it is due simply to the fact that the son is pre-
ferred to the daughter and all the care, attention and dainties
are lavished on him, whilst the daughter must be content with
the remnants of all three. . . . The result is that [the fe-
snale] death-rate between one and five is almost invariably
somewhat higher than the male death-rate.

This attitude toward the unwanted was illustrated
in an incident that I myself chanced upon in a hospital
in Bengal. The patient, a girl of five or six years, had
fallen down a well and sustained a bad cut across her
head. The mother, with the bleeding and unconscious
child in her arms, had rushed to the hospital for help.
In a day or two tetanus developed. Now the child lay
at death's door, in agony terrible to see. The crisis was
on, and the mother, crouching beside her, a figure of
grief and fear, muttered prayers to the gods while the
English doctor worked. Suddenly, there at the bedside,
stood a man a Bengali babu some sort of small
official or clerk.

"Miss Sahib," he said, addressing the doctor, "I
have come for my wife."

"Your wife!" exclaimed the doctor, sternly. "Look
at your wife. Look at your child. What do you mean! "

"I mean," he went on, "that I have come to fetch

[71]

MOTHER INDIA

my wife home, at once, for my proper marital use."

"But your child will die if her mother leaves her
now. You cannot separate them see!" and the child,
who had somehow understood the threat even through
her mortal pain, clung to her mother, wailing.

The woman threw herself prostrate upon the floor,
clutched his knees, imploring, kissed his feet, and with
her two hands, Indian fashion, took the dust from his
feet and put it upon her head. "My lord, my lord,"
she wept, "be merciful!"

"Come away," said he. "I have need of you, I say.
You have left me long enough."

"My lord the child the little child my Mas-
ter!"

He gave the suppliant figure a thrust with his f oot*
"I have spoken" and with never another word or
look, turning on the threshold, he walked away into
the world of sun.

The woman rose. The child screamed.

"Will you obey?" exclaimed the doctor, incredulous
for all her years of seeing.

"I dare not disobey," sobbed the woman and, pull-
ing her veil across her stricken face, she ran after her
man crouching, like a small, weak animal.

The girl, going to her husband by her ninth or
twelfth year, or earlier, has little time and less chance
to learn from books. But two things she surely will
have learned her duty toward her husband and her
duty toward those gods and devils that concern her.

THE EARTHLY GOD

Her duty toward her husband, as of old laid down in
the Padmafitranaf is thus translated: 5

There is no other god on earth for a woman than her hus-
band. The most excellent of all the good works that she can
do is to seek to please him by manifesting perfect obedience
to him. Therein should lie her sole rule of life.

Be her husband deformed, aged, infirm, offensive in his
manners; let him also be choleric, debauched, immoral, a
drunkard, a gambler; let him frequent places of ill-repute,
live in open sin with other women, have no affection what-
ever for his home; let him rave like a lunatic; let him live
Without honour; let him be blind, deaf, dumb or crippled, in
a word, let his defects be what they may, let his wickedness
be what it may, a wife should always look upon him as her
god, should lavish on him all her attention and care, paying
no heed whatsoever to his character and giving him no cause
whatsoever for displeasure. . . .

A wife must eat only after her husband has had his fill.
If the latter fasts, she shall fast, too; if he touch not food,
she also shall not touch it; if he be in affliction, she shall be
so, too; if he be cheerful she shall share his joy. . . . She
must, on the death of her husband, allow herself to be burnt
alive on the same funeral pyre; then everybody will praise
her virtue. . . .

If he sing she must be in ecstasy; if he dance she must
look at him with delight; if he speak of learned things she
must listen to him with admiration. In his presence, indeed,
she ought always to be cheerful, and never show signs of
sadness or discontent.

4 The Puranas, ancient religious poems, are the Bible of the Hindu
peoples.
* Hindu Manners Customs, and Ceremonies, pp. 344-9.

[73]

MOTHER INDIA

Let her carefully avoid creating domestic squabbles on the
subject of her parents* or on account of another woman whom
her husband may wish to keep, or on account of any un-
pleasant remark which may have been addressed to her. To
leave the house for reasons such as these would expose her to
public ridicule, and would give cause for much evil speaking.

If her husband flies into a passion, threatens her, abuses
her grossly, even beats her unjustly, she shall answer him
meekly, shall lay hold of his hands, kiss them, and beg his
pardon, instead of uttering loud cries and running away
from the house. . . .

Let all her words and actions give public proof that she
looks upon her husband as her god. Honoured by everybody,
she shall thus enjoy the reputation of a faithful and virtuous
spouse.

The Abbe Dubois found this ancient law still the
iX)de of nineteenth-century Hinduism, and weighed its
aspect with philosophic care. His comment ran: *

A real union with sincere and mutual affection, or even
peace, is very rare in Hindu households. The moral gulf
which exists in this country between the sexes is so great that
in the eyes of a native the woman is simply a passive object
who must be abjectly submissive to her husband's will and
fancy. She is never looked upon as a companion who can
share her husband's thoughts and be the first object of his
care and affection. The Hindu wife finds in her husband only
a proud and overbearing master who regards her as a fortu-
nate woman to be allowed the honour of sharing his bed and
board.

6 Hindu Manners, Customs, and Ceremonies, p. 231.

[74]

THE EARTHLY GOD

In the handling of this point by the modern, Rabin-
dranath Tagore, appears another useful hint as to the
caution we might well observe in accepting, at their face
value to us, the expressions of Hindu speakers and
writers. Says Tagore, presenting the Hindu theory: T

For the purpose of marriage, spontaneous love is unreliable;
its proper cultivation should yield the best results . . . and
this cultivation should begin before marriage. Therefore from
their earliest years, the husband as an idea is held up before
wir girls, in verse and story, through ceremonial and worship.
When at length they get this husband, he is to them not a
person but a principle, like loyalty, patriotism, or such other
abstractions. . .

As to the theory of the matter, let that be what it
may. As to the actuJ practice of the times, material
will be recalled from the previous pages of this book
bearing upon the likeness of the Hindu husband, as
such, to "loyalty," "patriotism," or any impersonal
abstraction.

Mr. Gandhi tirelessly denounces the dominance of
the old teaching. "By sheer force of a vicious custom,"
he repeats, "even the most ignorant and worthless
men have been enjoying a superiority over women
which they do not deserve and ought not to have." 8

But a creed through tens of centuries bred into weak,
ignorant, and fanatical peoples is not to be uprooted in
one or two hundred years j neither can it be shaken by
the wrath of a single prophet, however reverenced.

7 The Book of Marriage, Keyserlmg, pp. 112-13.

8 Quoted in The Indian Social Reformer, Oct. 29, 1922, p. 135.

[75]

MOTHER INDIA

The general body of the ancient law relating to the
status and conduct of women yet reigns practically
supreme among the great Hindu majority.

In the Puranic code great stress is laid upon the duty
of the wife to her mother-in-law. Upon this founda-
tion rests a tremendous factor in every woman's life.
A Hindu marriage does not betoken the setting up of
a new homestead j the little bride, on the contrary, is
simply added to the household of the groom's parents,
as that household already exists. There she becomes at
once the acknowledged servant of the mother-in-law,
at whose beck and call she lives. The father-in-law,
the sister-in-law, demand what they like of her, and,
bred as she is, it lies not in her to rebel. The very idea
that she possibly could rebel or acquire any degree of
freedom has neither root nor ground in her mind. She
exists to serve. The mother-in-law is often hard, ruling
without mercy or affection j and if by chance the child
is slow to bear children, or if her chPdren be daugh-
ters, then, too frequently, the elder woman's tongue is
a flail, her hand heavy in blows, her revengeful spirit
set on clouding her victim's life with threats of the
new wife who, according to the Hindu code, may sup-
plant and enslave her.

Not infrequently, in pursuing my inquiry in the
rural districts, I came upon the record of suicides of
women between the ages of fourteen and nineteen.
The commonest cause assigned by the Indian police
recorder was "colic pains, and a quarrel with the
mother-in-law."

[76]

THE EARTHLY GOD

As to the direct relation of wife to husband, as un-
derstood in high-class Hindu families today, it has
thus been described by that most eminent of Indian
ladies, whose knowledge of her sisters of all ranks and
creeds is wide, deep, and kind, Miss Cornelia Sorabji: *

Chief priestess of her husband, whom to serve is her re-
ligion and her delight . . . moving on a plane far below
him for all purposes religious, mental and social; gentle and
adoring, but incapable of participation in the larger interests
of his life. . . . To please his mother, whose chief hand-
maiden she is, and to bring him a son, these are her two
ambitions. . . . The whole idea of marriage in the east re-
volves simply on the conception of life; a community of in-
terests, companionship, these never enter into the general cal-
culation. She waits upon her husband when he feeds, silent
in his presence, with downcast eyes. To look him in the face
were bold indeed.

Then says Miss Sorabji, continuing her picture:

10

When she is the mother of a son, greater respect is hers
from the other women in the zenana . . . she has been suc-
cessful, has justified her existence. The self-respect it gives
the woman herself is most marked. She is still a faithful
slave to her husband, but she is an entity, a person, in so far
as that is possible in a Hindu zenana; she
above the women who taunted her, her hj
of a rival.

9 Between the Twilights, Cornelia Sora
don, 1908, pp. 125-32.
1( >Ibid., pp. 45-6.

MOTHER INDIA

This general characterization of the wife in the
zenana of educated, well-to-do, and prominent Hindus
finds its faithful echo in one of many similar incidents
that came to my notice in humbler fields. For the
orthodox Hindu woman, whoever she be, will obey the
law of her ancestors and her gods with a pride and
integrity unaffected by her social condition.

The woman, in this case, was the wife of a small
landowner in a district not far from Delhi. The man,
unusually enlightened, sent her to hospital for her
first confinement. But he sent her too late, and, after
a severe ordeal, the child was born dead.

Again, the following year, the same story was re-
peated. The patient was brought late, and even the
necessary Csesarean operation did not save the child.
Still a third time the zemindar appeared, bringing the
wife; but now, taught by experience, he had moved
in time. As the woman came out of the ether, the
young English nurse bent over her, all aglow with
the newSo

"Little mother, happy little mother, don't you want
to see your baby don't yoji want to see your boy?"

The head on the pillow turned away. Faintly,
slowly the words came back out of the pit of hopeless
night:

"Who wants to see a dead baby! I have seen
too many too many dead dead " The voice
trailed into silence. The heavy eyelids closed.

Then Sister picked up the baby. Baby squealed.

On that instant the thing was already done so

[78]

THE EARTHLY GOD

quickly done that none could measure the time of its
doing. The lifeless figure on the bed tautened. The
great black eyes flashed wide. The thin arms lifted in
a gesture of demand. For the first time in all her life,
perhaps, this girl was thinking in the imperative.

"Give me my son!" She spoke as an empress might
speak. u Send at once to my village and inform the
father of my son that I desire his presence*" Utterly
changed. Endued with dignity with self-respect
with importance.

The father came. All the relatives came, heaping
like flies into the little family quarters attached, in
Indian women's hospitals, to each private room. Ten
days they sat there over a dozen of them, in a space
some fifteen by twenty feet square. And on the tenth,
in a triumphant procession, they bore home to their
village mother and son.

Rich or poor, high caste or low caste, the mother
of a son will idolize the child. She has little knowl-
edge to give him, save knowledge of strange taboos
and fears and charms and ceremonies to propitiate a
universe of powers unseen. She would never discipline
him, even though she knew the meaning of the word.
She would never teach him to restrain passion or im-
pulse or appetite. She has not the vaguest conception
how to feed him or develop him. Her idea of a suffi-
cient meal is to tie a string around his little brown body
and stuff him till the string bursts. And so through all
his childhood he grows as grew his father before him,
back into the mists of time.

[79]

MOTHER INDIA

Yet, when the boy himself assumes married life, he
will honor his mother above his wife, and show her
often a real affection and deference. Then it is that the
woman comes into her own, ruling indoors with an iron
hand, stoutly maintaining the ancient tradition, and,
forgetful of her former misery, visiting upon the
slender shoulders of her little daughters-in-law all the
burdens and the wrath that fell upon her own young
back. But one higher step is perhaps reserved for her.
With each grandson laid in her arms she is again
exalted. The family line is secure. Her husband's soul
is protected. Proud is she among women. Blessed be
the gods!

Chapter VII

WAGES OF SIN

The reverse of the picture shows the Hindu widow
the accursed. That so hideous a fate as widowhood
should befall a woman can be but for one cause the
enormity of her sins in a former incarnation. From
the moment of her husband's decease till the last hour
of her own life, she must expiate those sins in shame
and suffering and self-immolation, chained in every
thought to the service of his soul. Be she a child of
three, who knows nothing of the marriage that bound
her, or be she a wife in fact, having lived with her
husband, her case is the same. By his death she is re-
vealed as a creature of innate guilt and evil portent,
herself convinced, when she is old enough to think at
all, of the justice of her fate. Miss Sorabji thus treats
the subject: 1

The orthodox Hindu widow suffers her lot with the fierce
enjoyment of martyrdom . . . but nothing can minimize the
evils of that lot. . . . That she accepts the fact makes it no
less of a hardship. For some sin committed in a previous birth,
the gods have deprived her of a husband. What is left to her
now but to work out his "salvation" and by her prayers and
penances to win him a better place in his next genesis? . . .
For the mother-in-law, what also is left but the obligation to

1 Between the Twilights, pp. 144-6.

MOTHER INDIA

curse? . . . But for this luckless one, her son might still be
in the land of the living. . . , There is no determined ani-
mosity in the attitude. The person cursing is as much an in-
strument of Fate as the person cursed. . . . [But] it is all
very well to assert no personal animosity toward her whom
you hold it a privilege to curse and to burden with every un-
pleasant duty imaginable. Your practise is apt to mislead.

The widow becomes the menial of every other per-
son in the house of her late husband. All the hardest
and ugliest tasks are hers, no comforts, no ease. She
may take but one meal a day and that of the meanest.
She must perform strict fasts. Her hair must be shaven
off. She must take care to absent herself from any
scene of ceremony or rejoicing, from a marriage, from
a religious celebration, from the sight of an expectant
mother or of any person whom the curse of her glance
might harm. Those who speak to her may speak in
terms of contempt and reproach ; and she herself is the
priestess of her own misery, for its due continuance is
her one remaining merit.

The old French traveler, Bernier, states that the
pains of widowhood were imposed "as an easy mode
of keeping wives in subjection, of securing their atten-
tion in times of sickness, and of deterring them from
administering poison to their husbands/' 2

But once, however, did I hear this idea from a
Hindu's lips. "We husbands so often make our wives
uhhappy," said this frank witness, "that we might well

2 Travels in the Mogul Empire, A.D. 1656-1668, Frangois Bernier,
Oxford University Press, 1916, pp. 310-11.

[82]

WAGES OF SIN

fear they would poison us* Therefore did our wise
ancestors make the penalty of widowhood so frightful
in order that the woman may not be tempted."

In the female wards of prisons in many parts of
India I have seen women under sentence for the mur-
der of their husbands. These are perhaps rare men-
talities, perhaps hysteria cases. More characteristic are
the still-recurring instances of practical suttee, where
the newly-widowed wife deliberately pours oil over
her garments, sets them afire and burns to death, in a
connived-at secrecy. She has seen the fate of other
widows. She is about to become a drudge, a slave,
starved, tyrannized over, abused and this is the sa-
cred way out ''following the divine law." Commit-
ting a pious and meritorious act, in spite of all foreign-
made interdicts, she escapes a present hell and may
hope for happier birth in her next incarnation.

Although demanded in the scripture already quoted,
the practice of burning the widow upon the husband's
funeral pyre is today unlawful. But it must be noted
that this change represents an exceptional episode; it
represents not a natural advance of public opinion, but
one of the rare incursions of the British strong hand
into the field of native religions. Suttee was forbidden
by British Governors 8 some twenty-nine years before
the actual taking over by the Crown of direct govern-
ment. That advanced Indian, Raja Ram Mohan Roy,
supported the act. But other influential Bengali geA-
tlemen, vigorously opposing, did not hesitate to push

8 Regulation XVII of 1829.

MOTHER INDIA

their fight for the preservation of the practice even to
the court of last resort the Privy Council in London.

Is it conceivable that, given opportunity, the sub-
merged root of the matter might come again to life
and light? In Mr. Gandhi's weekly 4 of November u,
1926, a Hindu writer declares the impossibility of a
widow's remarriage today, without the deathbed per-
mission of the deceased husband. No devout husband
will give such permission, the correspondent affirms,
and adds: "He will rather fain agree to his wife's be-
coming sail [suttee] if she can."

An inmate of her husband's home at the time of his
death, the widow, although she has no legal claim for
protection, may be retained there on the terms above
described, or she may be turned adrift. Then she must
live by charity or by prostitution, into which she not
seldom falls. And her dingy, ragged figure, her bristly,
shaven head, even though its stubble be white over the
haggard face of unhappy age, is often to be seen in
temple crowds or in the streets of pilgrimage cities,
where sometimes niggard piety doles her a handful of
rice.

As to remarriage, that, in orthodox Hinduism, is
impossible. Marriage is not a personal affair, but an
eternal sacrament. And it must never be forgotten that
the great majority of the Hindus are orthodox to the
bone. Whether the widow be an infant and a stranger
to the man whose death, she is told, was caused by her
sins, or whether she be twenty and of his bed and

4 Young India.

[84]

WAGES OF SIN

board, orthodoxy forbids her remarriage. Of recent
years, however, the gradual if unrecognized influence
of western teaching has aroused a certain response.
In different sections of India, several associations have
sprung up, having the remarriage of virgin widows as
one of their chief purported objects. The movement,
however, is almost wholly restricted to the most ad-
vanced element of Hindu society, and its influence is,
as yet, too fractional appreciably to affect statistics.

The observations on this point made by the Abbe
Dubois a century since still, in general, hold good. He
saw that the marriage of a small child to a man of
sixty and the forbidding of her remarriage after his
death must often throw the child, as a widow, into a
dissolute life. Yet widow remarriage was unknown.
Even were it permitted, says the Abbe, "the strange
preference which Brahmins have for children of very
tender years would make such a permission almost
nominal in the case of their widows." 5

And one cannot forget, in estimating the effect of
the young widow on the social structure of which she
is a part, that, in her infancy, she lived in the same
atmosphere of sexual stimulus that surrounded the
boy child, her brother. If a girl child so reared in
thought and so sharpened in desire be barred from
lawful satisfaction of desire, is it strange if the desire
prove stronger with her than the social law? Her
family, the family of the dead husband, will, for their
credit's sake, restrain her if they can. And often, per-

* Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, p. 212.

MOTHER INDIA

haps most often, she needs no restraint save her own
spirit of sacrifice. But the opposite example is fre-
quently commented upon by Indian speakers. Lala
Lajpat Rai, Swarajist politician, laments: *

The condition of child-widows is indescribable. God may
bless those who are opposed to their remarriage, but their su-
perstition introduces so many abuses and brings about so much
moral and physical misery as to cripple society as a whole and
handicap it in the struggle for life.

Mr. Gandhi acquiescently cites another Indian writer
on child marriage and enforced child widowhood, thus:
"It is bringing into existence thousands of girl-widows
every year who in their turn are a source of corruption
and dangerous infection to society." 7

Talk there is, resolutions passed, in caste and asso-
ciation conventions, as to changing these things of op-
pression and of scornings. But a virgin widow's re-
marriage is still a headline event, even to the reform
newspapers, while the remarriage of a Hindu widowed
wife is still held to be inconceivable.

And here, curiously enough, the very influence that
on the one hand most strongly operates to rescue the
woman, on the other more widely enslaves her. While
British practice and western education tend, at the top
of the ladder, to breed discontent with ancient darkness,
British public works, British sanitation and agricultural
development, steadily raising the economic condition of

Presidential Speech delivered before the Hindu Mahasabha Con-
ference, in Bombay, December, 1925.
7 Young India, Aug. 26, 1926, p. 302.

[86]

WAGES OF SIN

the lower classes, as steadily breed aspirants to greater
social prestige. Thus the census of 1921 finds restric-
tion in widow remarriage definitely increasing in those
low ranks of the social scale that, by their own code,
have no such inhibition. Hindu caste rank is entirely
independent of worldly wealth} but the first move of
the man of little place, suddenly awakening to a new
prosperity, security, and peace, is to mimic the manners
of those to whom he has looked up. He becomes a
social climber, not less in India than in the United
States, and assumes the shackles of the elect.

Mn Mukerjea of Baroda, an Indian official ob-
server, thus writes of attempts to break down the cus-
tom of obligatory widowhood: 8

All such efforts will be powerless as long as authoritative
Hindu opinion continues to regard the prohibition of widow
remarriage as a badge of respectability. Amongst the lower
Hindu castes, the socially affluent sections are discountenanc-
ing the practice of widow remarriage as actively as any
Brahman.

It was a distinguished Bengali, the Pundit Iswar
Chunder Vidyasagar, who, among Indians, started the
movement for remarriage of virgin widows and sup-
ported Government in the enactment of a law legaliz-
ing such remarriages. But over him and the fruit of
his work another eminent Indian thus laments: 9

8 Census of India, 1921, Vol. I, Chapter VII, paragraph 134.

9 A Nation in the Making. Sir Surendranath Banerjea, Oxford
University Press, 1925, pp. 8-9,

MOTHER INDIA

I well remember the stir and agitation which the move-
ment produced and how orthodox Hindus were up in arms
against it. . . . The champion of the Hindu widows died a
disappointed man, like so many of those who were in advance
of their age, leaving his message unfulfilled. . . . The prog-
ress which the movement has made since his death in 1891
has been slow. A new generation has sprung up, but he has
found no successor. The mantle of Elijah has not fallen upon
Elisha. The lot of the Hindu widow today ^emains very much
the same that it was fifty years ago. There are few to wipe her
tears and to remove the enforced widowhood that is her lot.
The group of sentimental sympathisers have perhaps in-
creased shouting at public meetings on the Vidyasagar an-
niversary day, but leaving unredeemed the message of the
great champion of the Hindu widow.

Mr. Gandhi, always true to his light, himself has
said: 10

To force widowhood upon little girls is a brutal crime for
which we Hindus are daily paying dearly. . . . There is no
warrant in any shastra u for such widowhood. Voluntary wid-
owhood consciously adopted by a woman who has felt the af-
fection of a partner adds grace and dignity to life, sanctifies
the home and uplifts religion itself. Widowhood imposed by
religion or custom is an unbearable yoke and defiles the home
by secret vice and degrades religion. And does not the Hindu
widowhood stink in one's nostrils when one thinks of old and
diseased men over fifty taking or rather purchasing girl wives,
sometimes one on top of another?

10 Young India, August 5, 1926. p. 276.
u Hindu book of sacred institutes.

[88]

WAGES OF SIN

But this, again, is a personal opinion, rather than a
public force. "We want no more of Gandhi's doc-
trines," one conspicuous Indian politician told mej
"Gandhi is a deluded man."

That distinguished Indian, Sir Ganga Ram, C.I.E.,
C.V.O., with some help from Government has built
and endowed a fine home and school for Hindu widows
in the city of Lahore. This establishment, in 1926, had
over forty inmates. In Bombay Presidency are five
Government-aided institutes for widows and deserted
wives, run by philanthropic Indian gentlemen. Other
such institutions may exist; but, if they do, their exist-
ence has escaped the official recorders. I myself saw,
in the pilgrim city of Nawadwip, in Bengal, a refuge
for widows maintained by local subscription and pil-
grims' gifts. It was fourteen years old and had eight
inmates the extent, it appeared, of its intention and
capacity.

The number of widows in India is, according to the
latest published official computation, 26,834,838. 12

12 Statistical Abstract for British India, 1914-15 to 1923-24, Gov
eminent of India Publication, 1925, p. 20.

[89]

Chapter VIII

MOTHER INDIA

Row upon row of girl children little tots all, four,
five, six, even seven years old, sitting cross-legged on
the floor, facing the brazen goddess. Before each one,
laid straight and tidy, certain treasures a flower, a
bead or two, a piece of fruit precious things brought
from their homes as sacrificial offerings. For this is a
sort of day-school of piety. These babies are learning
texts "mantrims" to use in worship learning the
rites that belong to the various ceremonies incumbent
upon Hindu women. And that is all they are learning;
that is all they need to know. Now in unison they
pray.

"What are they praying for?" one asks the teacher,
a grave-faced Hindu lady.

"What should a woman-child pray for? A husband,
if she is not married; or, if she is, then for a better
husband at her next re-birth."

Women pray first as to husbands; then, to bear
sons. Men must have sons to serve their souls.

Already we have seen some evidence of the general
attitude of the Hindu toward this, the greatest of all
his concerns, in its prenatal aspect. But another cardinal
point that, in any practical survey of Indian compe-
tency, can be neither contested nor suppressed, is the

[90]

MOTHER INDIA

manner in which the Hindu of all classes permits his
much-coveted son to be ushered into the light of day.

We have spoken of women's hospitals in various
parts of India. These are doing excellent work, mostly
gynecological. But they are few, relatively to the work
to be done, nor could the vast majority of Indian
women, in their present state of development, be in-
duced to use a hospital, were it at their very door.

What the typical Indian woman wants in her hour
of trial is the thing to which she is historically used
the midwife the dhai. And the dhai is a creature that
must indeed be seen to be credited.

According to the Hindu code, a woman in child-
birth and in convalescence therefrom is ceremonially
unclean, contaminating all that she touches. Therefore
only those become dhais who are themselves of the un-
clean, "untouchable" class, the class whose filthy habits
will be adduced by the orthodox Hindu as his good
and sufficient reason for barring them from contact
with himself. Again according to the Hindu code, a
woman in childbirth, like the new-born child itself, is
peculiarly susceptible to the "evil eye." Therefore no
woman whose child has died, no one who has had an
abortion, may, in many parts of India, serve as dhai,
because of the malice or jealousy that may secretly in-
spire her. Neither may any widow so serve, being her-
self a thing of evil omen. Not all of these disqualifi-
cations obtain everywhere. But each holds in large sec-
tions.

Further, no sort of training is held necessary for the

MOTHER INDIA

work. As a calling, it descends in families. At the death
of a dhat> her daughter or daughter-in-law may adopt
it, beginning at once to practice even though she has
never seen a confinement in all her life. 1 But other
women, outside the line of descent, may also take on
the work and, if they are properly beyond the lines of
the taboos, will find ready employment without any
sort of preparation and for the mere asking.

Therefore, in total, you have the half-blind, the
aged, the crippled, the palsied and the diseased, drawn
from the dirtiest poor, as sole ministrants to the women
of India in the most delicate, the most dangerous and
the most important hour of their existence.

The expectant mother makes no preparations for the
baby's coming such as the getting ready of little gar-
ments. This would be taking dangerously for granted
the favor of the gods. But she may and does toss into
a shed or into a small dark chamber whatever soiled
and disreputable rags, incapable of further use, fall
from the hands of the household during the year.

And it is into this evil-smelling rubbish-hole that
the young wife creeps when her hour is come upon
her. "Unclean" she is, in her pain unclean whatever
she touches, and fit thereafter only to be destroyed. In
the name of thrift, therefore, give her about her only
the unclean and the worthless, whether human or in-
animate. If there be a broken-legged, ragged string-
cot, let her have that to lie upon; it can be saved in

* Cf. Edris Griffin, Health Visitor, Delhi, in National Health, Oct,
P. 125.

[92]

MOTHER INDIA

that same black chamber for the next to need it. Other-
wise, make her a little support of cow-dung or of
stones, on the bare earthen floor. And let no one waste
effort in sweeping or dusting or washing the place till
this occasion be over. 2

When the pains begin, send for the dhai. If the
dhai y when the call reaches her, chances to be wearing
decent clothes, she will stop, whatever the haste, to
change into the rags she keeps for the purpose, in-
fected and re-infected from the succession of diseased
cases that have come into her practice. And so, at her
dirtiest, a bearer of multiple contagions, she shuts her-
self in with her victim.

If there be an air-hole in the room, she stops it up
with straw and refusej fresh air is bad in confine-
ments it gives fever. If there be rags sufficient to
make curtains, she cobbles them together, strings them
across a corner and puts the patient within, against the
wall, still farther to keep away the air. Then, to make
darkness darker, she lights the tiniest glim a bit of
cord in a bit of oil, or a little kerosene lamp without a
chimney, smoking villainously. Next, she makes a
small charcoal fire in a pan beneath the bed or close by
the patient's side, whence it joins its poisonous breath
to the serried stenches.

The first dhai that I saw in action tossed upon this
coal-pot, as I entered the room, a handful of some
special vile-smelling stuff to ward off the evil eye

2 National Health, 1925, p. 70. See also Maggie Ghose in Victoria
Memorial Scholarship Fund Report, Calcutta, 1918, p. 153.

[93]

MOTHER INDIA

my evil eye. The smoke of it rose thick also a tongue
of flame. By that light one saw her Witch-of-Endor
face through its vermin-infested elf-locks, her hang-
ing rags, her dirty claws, as she peered with festered
and almost sightless eyes out over the stink-cloud she
had raised. But it was not she who ran to quench the
flame that caught in the bed and went writhing up the
body of her unconscious patient. She was too blind
too dull of sense to see or to feel it.

If the delivery is at all delayed, the dhai is expected
to explore for the reason of the delay. She thrusts her
long-unwashed hand, loaded with dirty rings and
bracelets and encrusted with untold living contamina-
tions, into the patient's body, pulling and twisting at
what she finds there. 8 If the delivery is long delayed
and difficult, a second or a third dhai may be called in,
if the husband of the patient will sanction the expense,
and the child may be dragged forth in detached sections
a leg or an arm torn off at a time. 4

Again to quote from a medical woman: 5

One often sees in cases of contracted pelvis due to osteo-
malacia, if there seems no chance of the head passing down
[that the dhai} attempts to draw on the limbs, and, if possible,
breaks them off. She prefers to extract the child by main force,
and the patient in such cases is badly torn, often into her
bladder, with the resulting large vesico-vaginal fistulae so

V.MS.F. Report, "Improvement of the Conditions of Child-Birth
in India," pp. 70 et seq.

*Dr. Marion A. Wylie., M.A., M.B., Ch. B., Ibid., p. 85, and Ibid*
Appendix V, p. 69.

6 Ibid., p. 71.

[94]

MOTHER INDIA

common in Indian women, and which cause them so much
misery.

Such labor may last three, four, five, even six days.
During all this period the woman is given no nourish-
ment whatever such is the code and the dhai re-
sorts to all her traditions. She kneads the patient with
her fists; stands her against the wall and butts her with
her head; props her upright on the bare ground, seizes
her hands and shoves against her thighs with grue-
some bare feet, 6 until, so the doctors state, the patient's
flesh is often torn to ribbons by the dhaPs long, ragged
toe-nails. Or, she lays the woman flat and walks up and
down her body, like one treading grapes. Also, she
makes balls of strange substances, such as hollyhock
roots, or dirty string, or rags full of quince-seeds; or
earth, or earth mixed with cloves, butter and marigold
flowers; or nuts, or spices any irritant and thrusts
them into the uterus, to hasten the event. In some parts
of the country, goats' 'hair, scorpions' stings, monkey-
skulls, and snake-skins are considered valuable applica-
tions. 7

These insertions and the wounds they occasion com-
monly result in partial or complete permanent closing
of the passage.

If the afterbirth be over five minutes in appearing,
again the filthy, ringed and bracelet-loaded hand and

' VM.S.F. Report, p. 99, Dr. K. O. Vaughan.

sL pp. 151-2, Mrs. Chowdhri, sub-assistant surgeon.

las]

MOTHER INDIA

wrist are thrust in, and the placenta is ripped loose and
dragged away.

No clean clothes are provided for use in the con-
finement, and no hot water. Fresh cow-dung or goats'
droppings, or hot ashes, however, often serve as heat-
ing agents when the patient's body begins to turn cold. 9

In Benares, sacred among cities, citadel of orthodox
Hinduism, the sweepers, all of whom are "Untouch-
ables," are divided into seven grades. From the first
come the dhais; from the last and lowest come the
"cord-cutters." To cut the umbilical cord is considered
a task so degrading that in the Holy City even a sweep
will not undertake it, unless she be at the bottom of her
kind. Therefore the unspeakable dhai brings with her a
still more unspeakable servant to wreak her quality
upon the mother and the child in birth.

Sometimes it is a split bamboo that they usej some-
times a bit of an old tin can, or a rusty nail, or a pots-
herd or a fragment of broken glass. Sometimes, having
no tool of their own and having found nothing sharp-
edged lying about, they go out to the neighbors to
borrow. I shall not soon forget the cry: "Hi, there,
inside! Bring me back that knife! I hadn't finished
paring my vegetables for dinner."

The end of the cut cord, at best, is left undressed, to
take care of itself. In more careful and less happy
cases, it is treated with a handful of earth, or with
charcoal, or with several other substances, including

VM Sf. Report, p. 86, Dr. M. A. Wylie.
*lbid. t p. 152, Miss Vidyabai M. Ram.

MOTHER INDIA

cow-dung. Needless to add, a heavy per cent, of such
children as survive the strain of birth, die of lock-jaw z *
or of erysipelas.

As the child is taken from the mother, it is com-
monly laid upon the bare floor, uncovered and unat-
tended, until the dhai is ready to take it up. If it be a
girl child, many simple rules have been handed down
through the ages for discontinuing the unwelcome
life then and there.

In the matter of feeding, practice varies. In the
Central Provinces, the first feedings are likely to be of
crude sugar mixed with the child's own urine. 11 In
Delhi, it may get sugar and spices, or wine, or honey.
Or, it may be fed for the first three days on something
called guilt, a combination of spices in which have been
stewed old rust-encrusted lucky coins and charms writ-
ten out on scraps of paper. These things, differing
somewhat in different regions, castes and communities,
differ more in detail than in the quality of intelligence
displayed.

As to the mother, she, as has already been said, is
usually kept without any food or drink for from four
to seven days from the outset of her confinement j or,
if she be fed, she is given only a few dry nuts and
dates. The purpose here seems sometimes to be one of

* "Ordinarily half the children born in Bengal die before reaching
the age of eight years, and only one-quarter of the population reaches
the age of forty years. ... As to the causes influencing infant mor-
tality, 50 per cent, of the deaths are due to debility at birth and 114
per cent, to tetanus." 54th Annual Report of the Director of Public
Health of Bengal, pp. 8-10.

VM SJ?. Report, p. 86. Dr. M. A. Wylie.

[97]

MOTHER INDIA

thrift to save the family utensils from pollution. But
in any case it enjoys the prestige of an ancient tenet to
which the economical spirit of the household lends a
spontaneous support. 12

In some regions or communities the baby is not put
to the breast till after the third day 18 a custom pro-
ductive of dire results. But in others the mother is ex-
pected to feed not only the newly born, but her elder
children as well, if she have them. A child three years
old will not seldom be sent in to be fed at the mother's
breast during the throes of a difficult labor. "It cried
it was hungry. It wouldn't have other food," the
women outside will explain.

As a result, first, of their feeble and diseased an-
cestry y second, of their poor diet; and, third, of their
own infant marriage and premature sexual use and in-
fection, a heavy percentage of the women of India
are either too small-boned or too internally misshapen
and diseased to give normal birth to a child, but re-
quire surgical aid. It may safely be said that all these
cases die by slow torture, unless they receive the care
of a British or American woman doctor, or of an Indian
woman, British-trained. 1 * Such care, even though it be

ia Edris Griffin, in National Health f Oct., 1925, p. 124.

y.MS.F. Report, p. 86.

14 For the male medical student in India, instruction in gynecology
and midwifery is extremely difficult to get, for the reason that Indian
women can rarely be persuaded to come to hospitals open to medical
men. With the exception of certain extremely limited opportunities,
therefore, the Indian student must get his gynecology from books.
Even though he learns it abroad, he has little or no opportunity to
practice it Sometimes, it is true, the western-diplomaed Indian doc-
tor will conduct a labor case by sitting on the far side of a heavy
curtain calling out advice based on the statements shouted across by
the dhai who is handling the patient. But this scarcely constitutes
"practice" as the word is generally meant

MOTHER INDIA

at hand, is often denied the sufferer, either by the
husband or by the elder women of the family, in their
devotion to the ancient cults.

Or, even in cases where a delivery is normal, the
results, from an Indian point of view, are often more
tragic than death. An able woman surgeon, Dr. K. O.
Vaughan, of the Zenana Hospital at Srinagar, thus
expresses it: 15

Many women who are childless and permanently disabled
are so from the maltreatment received during parturition;
many men are without male issue because the child has been
killed by ignorance when born, or their wives so mangled by
the midwives they are incapable of further childbearing. . . .

I [illustrate] my remarks with a few cases typical of the
sort of thing every medical woman practising in this country
encounters.

A summons comes, and we are told a woman is in labour.
On arrival at the house we are taken into a small, dark and
dirty room, often with no window. If there is one it is stopped
up. Puerperal fever is supposed to be caused by fresh air. The
remaining air is vitiated by the presence of a charcoal fire
burning in a pan, and on a charfoy [cot] or on the floor is
the woman. With her are one or two dirty old women, their
clothes filthy, their hands begrimed with dirt, their heads alive
with vermin. They explain that they are midwives, that the
patient has been in labour three days, and they cannot get the
child out. They are rubbing their hands on the floor previous
to making another effort. On inspection we find the vulva
swollen and torn. They tell us, yes, it is a bad case and they
have had to use both feet and hands in their effort to deliver
her. . . . Chloroform is given and the child extracted with

** VJA.S.F. Report, pp. 98-9.

[99]

MOTHER INDIA

forceps. We are sure to find hollyhock roots which have been
pushed inside the mother, sometimes string and a dirty rag
containing quince-seeds in the uterus itself. , . .

Do not think it is the poor only who suffer like this. I can
show you the homes of many Indian men with University de-
grees whose wives are confined on filthy rags and attended by
these Bazaar dhais because it is the custom, and the course for
the B.A. degree does not include a little common sense.

Doctor Vaughan then proceeds to quote further
illustrations from her own practice, of which the fol-
lowing is a specimen: ie

A wealthy Hindu, a graduate of an Indian University and
a lecturer himself, a man who is highly educated, calls us to
his house, as his wife has been delivered of a child and has
fever. . . . We find that [the dhai\ had no disinfectants as
they would have cost her about Rs. 3 [one dollar, American],
and the fee she will get on the case is only Rs. I and a few
dirty clothes. The patient is lying on a heap of cast-oil and
dirty clothes, an old waistcoat, an English railway rug, a
piece of water-proof packing from a parcel, half a stained
ftnd dirty shirt of her husband's. There are no sheets or clean
rags of any kind. As her husband tells me: "We shall give
her clean things on the fifth day, but not now; that is out

custom."

That woman, in spite of all we could do, died of septi-
caemia contracted either from the dirty clothing which is saved
from one confinement in the family to another [unwashed],
or from the dhai, who did her best in the absence of either
hot water, soap, nail-brush or disinfectants.

" V.MS.F. Report, pp. 99-100.

[100]

MOTHER INDIA

Evidence is in hand of educated, traveled and well-
born Indians, themselves holders of European uni-
versity degrees, who permit their wives to undergo
this same inheritance of darkness. The case may be
cited of an Indian medical man, holding an English
University's Ph.D. and M.D. degrees, considered to
be exceptionally able and brilliant and now actually in
charge of a government center for the training of dhais
in modern midwifery. His own young wife being re-
cently confined, he yielded to the pressure of the elder
women of his family and called in an old-school dhai,
dirty and ignorant as the rest, to attend her. The wife
died of puerperal fever} the child died in the birth.
"When we have the spectacle of even educated Indians
with English degrees allowing their wives and children
to be killed off like flies by ignorant midwives," says
Doctor Vaughan again, "we can faintly imagine the
sufferings of their humbler sisters."

But the question of station or of worldly goods has
small part in the matter. To this the admirable sister-
hood of English and American women doctors unites
to testify.

Dr. Marion A. Wylie's words are: ir

These conditions are by no means confined to the poorest
or most ignorant classes. I have attended the families of
Rajahs, where many of these practices were carried out, and
met with strenuous opposition when I introduced ventilation
and aseptic measures.

p. 86.

[101]

MOTHER INDIA

Sweeper-girl or Brahman, outcaste or queen, there ia
essentially little to choose between their lots, in that
fierce moment for which alone they were born. An
Indian Christian lady of distinguished position and at-
tainment, whose character has opened to her many
doors that remain to others fast closed, gives the fol-
lowing story of her visit of mercy to a child-princess.

The little thing, wife of a ruling prince and just past
her tenth year, was already in labor when her visitor
entered the room. The dhais were busy over her, but
the case was obviously serious, and priestly assistance
had been called. Outside the door sat its exponent
an old man, reading aloud from the scriptures and
from time to time chanting words of direction deci-
phered from his book.

"Hark, within, there!" he suddenly shouted. "Now
it is time to make a fire upon this woman's body. Make
and light a fire upon her body, quick!"

Instantly the dhais set about to obey.

"And what will the fire do to our little princess?"
quietly asked the visitor, too practiced to express alarm.

"Oh," replied the women, listlessly, "if it be her fate
to live, she will live, and there will, of course, be a
great scar branded upon her. Or, if it be her fate to
die, then she will die" and on they went with their
fire-building.

Out to the ministrant squatting at the door flew the
quick-witted visitor. "Holy One," she asked, "are you
not afraid of the divine jealousies? You are about to
make the Fire-sacrifice but this is a queen, not a com-

[102]

MOTHER INDIA

mon mortal. Will not Mother Ganges see and be
jealous that no honor is paid to her?"

The old man looked up, perplexed. "It is true," he
said, "it is true the gods are ever jealous and easily
provoked to anger but the Book here surely says "
And his troubled eyes turned to the ancient writ out-
spread upon his knees.

"Have you Ganges water here in the house?" inter-
rupted the other.

"Surely. Dare the house live without it!" answered
the old one.

"Then here is what I am given to say: Let water of
Holy Ganges be put upon bright fire and made thrice
hot. Let it then be poured into a marvel-sack that the
gods, by my hand, shall provide. And let that sack be
laid upon the Maharani's body. So in a united offer-
ing fire and water together shall the gods be pro-
pitiated and their wrath escaped."

"This is wisdom. So be it!" cried the old man. Then
quick ran the visitor to fetch her Bond Street hot-water
bag.

Superstition, among the Indian peoples, knows few
boundary lines of condition or class. Women in gen-
eral are prone to believe that disease is an evidence of
the approach of a god. Medicine and surgery, driving
that god away, offend him, and it is ill business to of-
fend the Great Onesj better, therefore, charms and
propitiations, with an eye to the long run.

And besides the gods, there are the demons and evil

MOTHER INDIA

spirits, already as many as the sands of the sea, to whose
number more must not be added.

Among the worst of demons are the spirits of women
who died in childbirth before the child was born. These
walk with their feet turned backward, haunting lonely
roads and the family hearth, and are malicious beyond
the rest.

Therefore, when a woman is seen to be about to
breathe her last, her child yet undelivered she may
have lain for days in labor for a birth against which
her starveling bones are locked the dhai, as in duty
bound, sets to work upon precautions for the protec-
tion of the family.

First she brings pepper and rubs it into the dying
eyes, that the soul may be blinded and unable to find its
way out. Then she takes two long iron nails, and,
stretching out her victim's unresisting arms for the
poor creature knows and accepts her fate drives a
spike straight through each palm fast into the floor.
This is done to pinion the soul to the ground, to delay
its passing or that it may not rise and wander, vexing
the living. And so the woman dies, piteously calling to
the gods for pardon for those black sins of a former
life for which she now is suffering.

This statement, horrible as it is, rests upon the testi-
mony of many and unimpeachable medical witnesses in
widely separated parts of India. All the main state-
ments in this chapter rest upon such testimony and
upon my own observation.

It would be unjust to assume, however, that the
[104]

MOTHER INDIA

for all her monstrous deeds, is a blameworthy
creature. Every move that she makes is a part of the
ancient and accepted ritual of her calling. Did she omit
or change any part of it, nothing would be gained}
simply the elder women of the households she serves
would revile her for incapacity and call in another
more faithful to the creed.

Her services include attendance at the time of con-
finement and for ten days, more or less, thereafter, the
approximate interval during which no member of the
family will approach the patient because of her un-
cleanness. During this time the dhai does all that is
done for the sick woman and the infant. At its end she
is expected to clean the defiled room and coat with
cow-dung its floor and walls.

She receives her pay in accordance with the sex of
the child that was born. These sums vary. A rich man
may give her for the entire period of service as much
as Rs. 15 (about $5.00) if the child be a son. From
the well-to-do the more usual fee is about R. I ($.33)
for a son and eight annas ($.16) for a daughter. The
poor pay the dhai for her fortnight's work the equiva-
lent of four or five cents for a son and two to three
cents for a daughter. Herself the poorest of the poor,
she has no means of her own wherewith to buy as much
as a cake of soap or a bit of clean cotton. None are any-
where provided for her. And so, the slaughter goes
on. 18

Various funds subscribed by British charity sustain

i VM.SJ*. Rfport, p. 89.

[105]

MOTHER INDIA

maternal and child-welfare works in many parts of
India, whose devoted British doctors and nurses attempt
to teach the dhris. But the task is extremely difficult.
Invariably the dhais protest that they have nothing to
learn, in which their clients agree with them. One
medical woman said in showing me her dhai class, an
appalling array of decrepit old crones:

"We pay these women, out of a fund from Eng-
land, for coming to class. We also pay some of them
not to practice, a small sum, but just enough to live on.
They are too old, too stupid and too generally miser-
able to be capable of learning. Yet, when we beg them
not to take cases because of the harm they do, they say:
*How else can we live? This is our only means to earn
f ood.' Which is true."

A characteristic incident, freshly happened when it
came to my knowledge, concerned a Public Health
instructor stationed, by one of the funds above men-
tioned, in the north. To visualize the scene, one must
think of the instructor as what she is a conspicuously
comely and spirited young lady of the type that under
all circumstances looks chic and well-groomed. She had
been training a class of dhais in Lahore, and had invited
her "graduates" when handling a difficult case to call
her in for advice.

At three o'clock one cold winter's morning of 1926,
a graduate summoned her. The summons led to the
house of an outcaste, a little mud hut with an interior
perhaps eight by twelve feet square. In the room were
ten people, three generations of the family, all save

[106]

MOTHER INDIA

the patient fast asleep. Also, a sheep, two goats, some
chickens and a cow, because the owner did not trust his
neighbors. No light but a glim in an earthen pot. No
heat but that from the bodies of man and beast. No
aperture but the door, which was closed.

In a small alcove at the back of the room four cot
beds, planted one upon another, all occupied by mem-
bers of the family. In the cot third from the ground
lay a woman in advanced labor.

"Dhai went outside," observed Grandmother, stir-
ting sleepily, and turned her face to the wall.

Not a moment to be lost. No time to hunt up the
dhai. By good luck, the cow lay snug against the cot-
pile. So our trig little English lady climbs up on the
back of the placid and unobjecting cow, and from that
vantage point successfully brings into the world a pair
of tiny Hindus a girl and a boy.

Just as the thing is over, back comes the dhai, in a
rage. She had been out in the yard, quarreling with the
husband about the size of the coin that he should lay
in her palm, on which to cut the cord without which
coin already in her possession no canny dhai will
operate.

And this is merely an ordinary experience.

"Our Indian conduct of midwifery undoubtedly
should be otherwise than it is," said a group of Indian
gentlemen discussing the whole problem as it exists
in their own superior circle, "but is it possible, do you
think, that enough English ladies will be found to
come out and do the work inclusively?"

[107]

MOTHER INDIA

A fractional percentage of the young wives are noif
found ready to accept modern medical help. But it is
from the elder women of the household that resistance
both determined and effective comes.

Says Dr. Agnes C. Scott, M.B., B.S., of the Pun-
jab, one of the most distinguished of the many British
medical women today giving their lives to India: 19

An educated man may desire a better-trained woman to
attend on his wife, but he is helpless against the stone wall of
ignorance and prejudice built and kept up by the older women
of the zenana who are the real rulers of the house.

Dr. K. O. Vaughan says upon this point:

20

The women are their own greatest enemies, and if any
one can devise a system of education and enlightenment for
grandmother, great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother
which will persuade them not to employ the ignorant, dirty
Bazaar dtiai, they will deserve well of the Indian nation. In
my opinion that is an impossible task.

And another woman surgeon adds: 21

Usually a mother-in-law or some ancient dame superin-
tends the confinement, who is herself used to the old tradi-
tions and insists on their observance. ... It has been the
immemorial custom that the management of a confinement is
the province of the leading woman of the house, and the men
are powerless to interfere.

V.M.S.F. Report, p. 91. Cf. Sir Patrick Hehir, The Medical
Profession in India, Henry Frowde & Hodder and Stoughton, Lon-
don, 1923, pp. 125-31.

20 Ibid., p. 101.
.7l.

[IDS]

MOTHER INDIA

Thus arises a curious picture the picture of the man
who has since time immemorial enslaved his wife, and
whose most vital need in all life, present and to come, is
the getting of a sonj and of this man, by means none
other than the will of his willing slave, balked in his
heart's desire! He has thought it good that she be kept
ignorant j that she forever suppress her natural spirit
and inclinations, walking ceremonially, in stiff harness,
before him, her "earthly god." She has so walked,
obedient from infancy to death, through untold cen-
turies of merciless discipline, while he, from infancy to
death, through untold centuries, has given himself no
discipline at all. And now their harvests ripen in kind:
hers a death-grip on the rock of the old law, making
her dead-weight negative to any change, however
merciful} his, a weakness of will and purpose, a fatigue
of nerve and spirit, that deliver him in his own house,
beaten, into the hands of his slave.

Of Indian babies born alive about 2,OOO,OOO die
each year. "Available statistics show," says the latest
Census of India, "that over forty per cent, of the deaths
of infants occur in the first week after birth, and over
sixty per cent, in the first month." 22

The number of still births is heavy. Syphilis and
gonorrhea are among its main causes, to which must
be added the sheer inability of the child to bear the
strain of coming into the world.

Vital statistics are weak in India, for they must
largely depend upon illiterate villagers as collectors.

** Census of India, 1921, Vol. I f Part I, p. 132.

MOTHER INDIA

If a baby dies, the mother's wail trails down the dark-
ness of a night or two. But if the village be near a
river, the little body may just be tossed into the
stream, without waste of a rag for a shroud. Kites
and the turtles finish its brief history. And it is more
than probable that no one in the village will think it
worth while to report either the birth or the death.
Statistics as to babies must therefore be taken as at
best approximate.

It is probable, however, in view of existing condi-
tions, that the actual figures of infant mortality, were
it possible to know them, would surprise the western
mind rather by their smallness than by their height.
"I used to think," said one of the American medical
women, "that a baby was a delicate creature. But ex-
perience here is forcing me to believe it the toughest
fabric ever made, since it ever survives."

Chapter IX

BEHIND THE VEIL

The chapters preceding have chiefly dealt with the
Hindu, who forms, roughly, three-quarters of the
population of India. The remaining quarter, the Mu-
hammadans, differ considerably as between the north-
ern element, whose blood contains a substantial strain
of the old conquering Persian and Afghan stock, and
the southern contingent, who are, for the larger part,
descendants of Hindu converts retaining in greater or
less degree many of the qualities of Hindu character.

In some respects, Muhammadan women enjoy great
advantages over their Hindu sisters. Conspicuous
among such advantages is their freedom from infant
marriage and from enforced widowhood, with the train
of miseries evoked by each. Their consequent better
inheritance, supported by a diet greatly superior to
that of the Hindu, brings them to the threshold of a
maturity sturdier than, that of the Hindu type. Upon
crossing that threshold the advantage of Muhamma-
dan women of the better class is, however, forfeit. For
they pass into practical life-imprisonment within the
four walls of the home.

Purdah, as this system of women's seclusion is
called, having been introduced by the Muslim con-
querors and by them observed, soon came to be re-

[mi

MOTHER INDIA

garded by higher caste Hindus as a hall-mark of social
prestige. These, therefore, adopted it as a matter of
mode. And today, as a consequence of the growing
prosperity of the country, this mediaeval custom, like
the interdiction of remarriage of virgin widows among
the Hindus, seems to be actually on the increase. For
every woman at the top of the scale whom western
influence sets free, several humbler but prospering sis-
ters, socially ambitious, deliberately assume the bonds.

That view of women which makes them the proper
loot of war was probably the origin of the custom of
purdah. When a man has his women shut up within
his own four walls, he can guard the door. Taking
Indian evidence on the question, it appears that in
some degree the same necessity exists today. In a part
of India where purdah but little obtains, I observed
the united request of several Hindu ladies of high
position that the Amusement Club for English and
Indian ladies to which they belong reduce the mini-
mum age required for membership to twelve or, bet-
ter, to eleven years. This, they frankly said, was be-
cause they were afraid to leave their daughters of
that age at home, even for one afternoon, without a
mother's eye and accessible to the men of the family.

Far down the social scale the same anxiety is found.
The Hindu peasant villager's wife will not leave her
girl child at home alone for the space of an hour, being
practically sure that, if she does so, the child will be
ruined. I dare not affirm that this condition every-
where obtains. But I can affirm that it was brought to

[112]

BEHIND THE VEIL

my attention by Indians and by Occidentals, as regu-
lating daily life in widely separated sections of the
country.

No typical Muhammadan will trust another man in
his zenana, simply because he knows that such liberty
would be regarded as opportunity. If there be a hand-
ful of Hindus of another persuasion, it is almost or
quite invariably because they are reflecting some part of
the western attitude toward women j and this they do
without abatement of their distrust of their fellow-
men. Intercourse between men and women which is
both free and innocent is a thing well-nigh incredible
to the Indian mind.

In many parts of India the precincts of the zenana,
among better-class Hindus, are therefore closed and
the women cloistered within. And the cloistered Mu-
hammadan women, if they emerge from their seclu-
sion, do so under concealing veils, or in concealing
vehicles. The Rolls-Royce of a Hindu reigning prince's
wife may sometimes possess dark window-glasses,
through which the lady looks out at ease, herself un-
seen. But the wife of a prosperous Muhammadan cook,
if she go out on an errand, will cover herself from
the crown of the head downward in a thick cotton
shroud, through whose scant three inches of mesh-
covered eye-space she peers half -blinded.

I happened to be present at a "purdah party" a
party for veiled ladies, attended by ladies only in a
private house in Delhi when tragedy hovered nigh.
The Indian ladies had all arrived, stepping heavily

MOTHER INDIA

swathed from their close-curtained motor cars. Their
hostess, wife of a high English official, herself had
met them on her threshold j for, out of deference to
the custom of the purdah, all the men servants had

been banished from the house, leaving Lady alone

to conduct her guests to the dressing room. There they
had laid aside their swathings. And now, in all the
grace of their native costumes, they were sitting about
the room, gently conversing with the English ladies
invited to meet them. The senior Indian lady easily
dominated her party. She was far advanced in years,
they said, and she wore long, light blue velvet trous-
ers, tight from the knee down, golden slippers, a smart
little jacket of silk brocade and a beautifully embroid-
ered Kashmir shawl draped over her head.

We went in to tea. And again Lady , single-
handed, except for the help of the English ladies,
moved back and forth, from pantry to tea-table, serv-
ing her Indian guests.

Suddenly, from the veranda without, arose a sound
of incursion a rushing men's voices, women's voices,
loud, louder, coming close. The hostess with a face of
dismay dashed for the door. Within the room panic
prevailed. Their great white mantles being out of
reach, the Indian ladies ran into the corners, turning
their backs, while the English, understanding their
plight, stood before them to screen them as best might
be.

Meantime, out on the veranda, more fracas had
arisen then a sudden silence and a whir of retreating

BEHIND THE VEIL

wheels. Lady returned, panting, all apologies

and relief.

"I am too sorry! But it is all over now. Do forgive
it! Nothing shall frighten you again," she said to the
trembling Indian ladies; and, to the rest of us: "It was
the young Roosevelts come to call. They didn't know!"

It was in the talk immediately following that one of
the youngest of the Indian ladies exclaimed:

"You find it difficult to like our furdah. But we
have known nothing else. We lead a quiet, peaceful,
protected life within our own homes. And, with men
as they are, we should be miserable, terrified, outside."

But one of the ladies of middle age expressed an-
other mind: "I have been with my husband to Eng-
land," she said, speaking quietly to escape the others'
ears. "While we were there he let me leave off $urdah y
for women are respected in England. So I went about
freely, in streets and shops and galleries and gardens
and to the houses of friends, quite comfortable always.
No one frightened or disturbed me and I had much in-
teresting tahc with gentlemen as well as ladies. Oh, it
was wonderful a paradise! But here here there is
nothing. I must stay within the zenana, keeping strict
furdah, as becomes our rank, seeing no one but the
women, and my husband. We see nothing. We know
nothing. We have nothing to say to each other. We
quarrel. It is dull. But they," nodding surreptitiously
toward the oldest woman, "will have it so. It is only
because of our hostess that such as she would come
here today. More they would never consent to. And

MOTHER INDIA

they know how to make life horrible for us In each
household, if we offer to relax an atom of the purdah
law."

Then, looking from face to face, one saw the illus-
tration of the talk the pretty, blank features of the
novices j the unutterable listlessness and fatigue of
those of the speaker's age; the sharp-eyed, iron-lipped
authority of the old.

The report of the Calcutta University Commission
says: x

All orthodox Bengali women of the higher classes, whether
Hindu or Muslim, pass at an early age behind the furdah,
and spend the rest of their lives in the complete seclusion of
their homes, and under the control of the eldest woman of
the household. This seclusion is more strict among the Musal-
mans than among the Hindus. ... A few westernised
women have emancipated themselves, . . . [but] they are
regarded by most of their countrywomen as denationalised.

Bombay, however, practices but little furdah,
largely, no doubt, because of the advanced status and
liberalizing influence of the Parsi ladies } and in the
Province of Madras it is as a rule peculiar only to the
Muhammadans and the wealthy Hindus. From two
Hindu gentlemen, both trained in England to a scien-
tific profession, I heard that they themselves had in-
sisted that their wives quit ^urdah y and that they were
bringing up their little daughters in a European school.
But their wives, they added, unhappy in what seemed

*VoL II, Part I, pp. 4-5-

BEHIND THE VEIL

to them too great exposure, would be only too glad to
resume their former sheltered state. And, viewing
things as they are, one can scarcely escape the conclu-
sion that much is to be said on that side. One fre-
quently hears, in India and out of it, of the beauty of
the sayings of the Hindu masters on the exalted posi-
tion of women. One finds often quoted such passages
as the precept of Manu:

Where a woman is not honoured
Vain is sacrificial rite.

But, as Mr. Gandhi tersely sums it up: "What is the
teaching worth, if their practice denies it?" 2

One consequence of purdah seclusion is its incuba-
tion of tuberculosis. Dr. Arthur Lankester 3 has shown
that among the purdah-keeping classes the mortality
of women from tuberculosis is terribly high. It is also
shown that, among persons living in the same locality
and of the same habits and means, the men of the
purdah-keeping classes display a higher incidence of
death from tuberculosis than do those whose women
are less shut in.

The Health Officer for Calcutta declares in his
report for 1917:

In spite of the improvement in the general death-rate of
the city, the death-rate amongst females is still more than 40
per cent, higher than amongst males. . . . Until it is real*

2 Statement to the author, Sabarmati, Ahmedabad, March 17, 1926.

1 Tuberculosis m India, Arthur Lankester, M.D., Butterworth &

Co., London, 1020, p. 140.

MOTHER INDIA

ised that the strict observance of the ptrdah system in a large
city, except in the case of the very wealthy who can afford
spacious homes standing in their own grounds, necessarily in-
volves the premature death of a large number of women, this
standing reproach to the city will never be removed.

Dr. Andrew Balfour, Director of the London School
of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, in pointing out
how perfectly the habits of the Indian peoples favor
the spread of the disease, speaks of "the system by
which big families live together} the purdah custom
relegating women to the dark and dingy parts of the
house j the early marriages, sapping the vitality of
thousands of the young , the pernicious habit of indis-
criminate spitting." 4 These, added to dirt, bad sani-
tation, confinement, lack of air and exercise, make a
perfect breeding-place for the White Death. Between
nine hundred thousand and one million persons, it is
estimated, die annually of tuberculosis in India. 5

It has been further estimated that forty million In-
dian women, Muhammadan and Hindu, are today in
purdah* In the opinion, however, of those experienced
officers whom I could consult, this estimate, if it is in-
tended to represent the number of women kept so
strictly cloistered that they never leave their apart-
ments nor see any male save husband and son, is prob-
ably three times too high. Those who never see the
outer world, from their marriage day till the day of

4 Health Problems of the Empire, Dr. Andrew Balfour and Dr.
H. H. Scott, Collins, London, 1924, p. 286.
* Ibid., p. 285.
6 India and Missions, The Bishop of DornakaL

BEHIND THE VEIL

their death, number by careful estimate of minimum
and maximum between 11,250,000 and 17,290,000
persons.

As to the mental effect of the purdah system upon
those who live under it, one may leave its characteri-
zation to Indian authorities.

Says Dr. N. N. Parakh, the Indian physician: T

Ignorance and the ^purdah system have brought the women
of India to the level of animals. They are unable to look
after themselves, nor have they any will of their own. They
are slaves to their masculine owners. 8

Said that outstanding Swarajist leader, Lala Lajpat
Rai, in his Presidential address to the Hindu Maha-
sabha Conference held in Bombay in December, 1925:

The great feature of present-day Hindu life is passivity.
"Let it be so" sums up all their psychology, individual and
social. They have got into the habit of taking things lying
down. They have imbibed this tendency and this psychology
and this habit from their mothers. It seems as if it was in
their blood. . . . Our women labour under many handicaps.
It is not only ignorance and superstition that corrode their
intelligence, but even physically they are a poor race. . .
Women get very little open air and almost no exercise. How
on earth is the race, then, to improve and become efficient?
A large number of our women develop consumption and die
at an early age. Such of them as are mothers, infect their
children also. Segregation of cases affected by tuberculosis is

f Legislative Assembly Debates, Vol. Ill, Part I, p. 881.
Cf., however, ante, pp. 77, 80, 109, 116, etc.

MOTHER INDIA

almost impossible. . . . There is nothing so hateful as a
quarrelsome, unnecessarily assertive, impudent, ill-mannered
Woman, but even if that were the only road which the Hindu
Woman must traverse in order to be an efficient, courageous,
independent and physically fit mother, I would prefer it to
the existing state of things.

At this point, the practical experience of a school-
mistress, the English principal of a Calcutta girls 1 col
lege, may be cited. Dated eight years later than the
Report of the Calcutta Health Officer already quoted,
it concerns the daughters of the most progressive and
liberal of Bengal's families. 9

They dislike exercise and take it only under compulsion.
They will not go into the fresh air if they can avoid doing
so. The average student is very weak. She needs good food,
exercise, and often remedial gymnastics. The chest is con-
tracted, and the spine often curved. She has no desire for
games. . . , We want the authority ... to compel the stu-
dent to take those remedies which will help her to grow into
a woman.

But the introduction of physical training as a help
to the bankrupt physiques of Hindu girls is thus far
only a dream of the occidental intruder. Old orthodoxy*
will not have it so.

The Hindu father is prone to complain that he does not
want his daughter turned into a nautch girl. She has to be
married into one of a limited number of families; and there

9 Sister Mary Victoria, Principal of the Diocesan College for Girls,
Fifth Quinquennial Review of the Progress of Education in Bengal,
paragraphs 521-4.

[120]

BEHIND THE VEIL

is always a chance of one of the old ladies exclaiming, "This
girl has been taught to kick her legs about in public* Surely
such a shameless one is not to be brought into our house ! " 10

"It is, indeed, only among the orthodox," says the
authority quoting this testimony, "that this kind of ob-
jection is taken. But the orthodox are the majority." u

Under the caption, "Thou Shalt Do No Murder,"
the Oxford Mission of Calcutta printed, in its weekly
journal of February 20, 1926, an editorial beginning
as follows:

A few years ago we published an article with the above
heading in which was vividly described by a woman writer
the appalling destruction of life and health which was going
on in Bengal behind the purdah and in zenanas amongst the
women herded there. We thought that the revelations then
made, based on the health officer's reports, would bring to us
a stream of indignant letters demanding instant reform. The
effect amongst men folk was entirely nil. Apparently not a
spark of interest was roused. An article condemning the silly
credulity of the use of charms and talismans at once evokes
criticism, and the absurdities of superstition are vigorously
defended even by men who are graduates. But not a voice was
raised in horror at the fact that for every male who dies of
tuberculosis in Calcutta five females die.

Yet among young western-educated men a certain
abstract uneasiness begins to appear concerning things
as they are. After they have driven the Occident out
of India, many of them say, they must surely take up

10 The Inspectress for Eastern Bengal, Calcutta University Com*
mission Report, Vol. II, Part I, p. 23.
. 24.

MOTHER INDIA

this matter of women. Not often, however, does one
find impatience such as that of Abani Mohan Das
Gupta, of Calcutta, expressed in the journal just
quoted.

I shudder to think about the condition of our mothers and
sisters in the "harem." . . . From early morn till late at
night they are working out the same routine throughout the
whole of their lives without a murmur, as if they are patience
incarnate. There are many instances where a woman has
entered the house of her husband at the time of the marriage
and did not leave it until death had carried her away. They
are always in harness as if they have no will or woe but only
to suffer suffer without any protest ... I appeal to young
Indians to unfurl their flag for the freedom of women. Allow
them their right. . . . Am I crying in the wilderness?

Bengal is the seat of bitterest political unrest the
producer of India's main crop of anarchists, bomb-
throwers and assassins. Bengal is also among the most
sexually exaggerated regions of India j and medical
and police authorities in any country observe the link
between that quality and "queer" criminal minds the
exhaustion of normal avenues of excitement creating a
thirst and a search in the abnormal for gratification.
But Bengal is also the stronghold of strict furdah, and
one cannot but speculate as to how many explosions
of eccentric crime in which the young politicals of
Bengal have indulged were given the detonating touch
by the unspeakable flatness of their pr^A-deadened
home lives, made the more irksome by their own half-
digested dose of foreign doctrines.

[122]

Chapter X

WOMAN THE SPINSTER

Less than 2 per cent, of the women of British India
are literate in the sense of being able to write a letter
of a few simple phrases, and read its answer, in any
one language or dialect. To be exact, such literates
numbered, in 1921, eighteen to the thousand. 1 But in
the year 1911 they numbered only ten to the thousand.
And, in order to estimate the significance of that in-
crease, two points should be considered: first, that a
century ago literate women, save for a few rare stars,
were practically unknown in India; and, second, that
the great body of the peoples, always heavily opposed
to female education, still so opposes it, and on religio-
social grounds.

Writing in the beginning of the nineteenth century,
the Abbe Dubois said: 2

The social condition of the wives of the Brahmins differs
very little from that of the women of other castes. . . .
They are considered incapable of developing any of those
higher mental qualities which would make them more worthy
of consideration and also more capable of playing a useful
part in life. ... As a natural consequence of these views,
female education is altogether neglected. A young girl's min<|

1 India in 1924-25, L. F. Rushbrook Williams, C.B.E., p. 276.
8 Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, pp. 336-7.

MOTHER INDIA

remains totally uncultivated, though many of them have good
abilities. ... It would be thought a disgrace to a respectable
woman to learn to read; and even if she had learnt she would
be ashamed to own it.

This was written of the Hindu. But Islam in India
has also disapproved of the education of women, which,
therefore, has been held by the vast majority of both
creeds to be unnecessary, unorthodox, and dangerous.

In the year 1917, the Governor-General of India
in Council appointed a commission to inquire and
recommend as to the status of the University of Cal-
cutta and of tributary educational conditions in Bengal.
This commission comprised eminent British educators
from the faculties of the Universities of Leeds, Glas-
gow, Manchester, and London, allied with eminent
Indian professionals. Bengal, the field of inquiry, has
long stood distinguished among all other provinces of
British India for its thirst for learning. The testimonies
accumulated by the Commission during its three years'
work may consequently be taken as not unkindly re-
flecting the wider Indian horizon.

With regard to the education of women, it is there-
fore of interest to find Mr. Brajalal Chakravarti, Sec-
retary of the Hindu Academy at Daulatpur, affirm-
ing: 8

It is strictly enjoined in the religious books of the Hindus
that females should net be allowed to come under any influ-*
ence outside that of the family. For this reason, no system of

8 Calcutta University Commission Report, VoL XII, p. 414.

[124]

WOMAN THE SPINSTER

school and college education can be made to suit their require*
ments. . . . Women get sufficient moral and practical train-
ing in the household and that is far more important than the
type of education schools can give.

Another of the Commission's witnesses, Mr. Hari-
das Goswamy, Head Master of the High School at
Asansol, amplified the thought, saying: *

It is not wise to implant in [girls] by means of education
tastes which they would not have an opportunity to gratify in
their after life, and thus sow the seeds of future discontent
and discord.

And Mr. Rabindra Mohan Dutta, member of the
faculty of the University itself, even while deploring
that "darkness of ignorance and superstition" which, he
asserts, puts the women of India "in continual conflict
and disagreement with their educated husbands, broth^
ers or sons," would yet follow the orthodox multitude,
genuinely fearful of importing into the Indian home,
from the distaff side,

the spirit of revolutionary and rationalistic iconoclasm con-
demning all our ancient institutions that are the outcome of a
long past and are part of our flesh and blood as it were.

When, however, the topic of women's education
comes up for discussion in Indian political bodies,
speakers arise on the side of change. In the Delhi Leg-

*Ibid., p. 426.
Ibid., p. 422.

MOTHER INDIA

islative Assembly, Dr. Hari Singh Gour* denounces
the sequestration and suppression of women. And
Munshi Iswar Saran, 7 member for the cities of the
United Provinces, points out, in a spirit of ridicule,
that it is

... the sin of this Kali Yuga [Age of Destruction] that
youngsters receive education and then decline to be ordered
about by their elders. . . . Such is our foolhardiness that we
have started giving education to our girls. ... If this is
going on, I ask whether you believe that you will be able to
dictate to your daughters?

I recall the heat with which a wealthy young Hindu
of my acquaintance, but just returnee! from an English
university, asserted that he would never, never take
an Indian bride, because he would not tie himself to
"a wife of the tenth century." AnJ amon^ western-
educated Indians in the higher walks of life, the desire
for similarly educated \vl/es sometimes rises even to a
willingness to accept such brides with dowries smaller
than would otherwise be exacted.

But this factor, though recognizable, is as yet small.
Bombay, perhaps, gives its women more latitude than
does any other province. Yet its Education Report as-
serts: 8

Educated men desire educated wives for their sons and pre-
sumably educate their daughters with the same object in view,

* Legislative Assembly Debates, 1921, Vol. I, Part I, p. 363.
''Ibid., 1922, Vol. II, Part II, p. 1631.

8 Quoted in Progress of Education in India, 1917-22, Eighth Quin-
quennial Review, pp. 129-30.

WOMAN THE SPINSTER

but they generally withdraw them from school on any mani
festation of a desire to ... push education to any length
which might interfere with or delay marriage.

The Report of the Central Provinces affirms: *

Even those parents who are not averse to their daughters 1
being literate consider that the primary course is sufficient, and
that after its completion girls are too old to be away from
their homes.

And Assam adds: *

[Parents] send their girls to school in order to enable them-
selves to marry them better and occasionally on easier terms.
But as soon as a suitable bridegroom is available the girl is
at once placed in the seclusion of the furdah.

Certainly the great weight of sentiment remains in-
tact in its loyalty to ancient conditions. To disturb them
were to risk the mould of manhood. The metaphor of
Dr. Brajendranath Seal, M.A., Ph.D., Professor of
Mental and Moral Science in Calcutta University,
implies the dreaded risk: "Man," writes this Hindu
philosopher, "is a home-brew in the vat of woman the
brewster, or, as the Indian would put it, a home-spun
in the loom of woman the spinster." e

On such general grounds, says the Calcutta Univer-
sity Commission, 10 is the feeling against women's edu-
cation "very commonly supported by the men, even by

*Ibid.

* Calcutta University Commission Report, Vol. XII, p. 62.

a7Wd.,VoLII, Part I, p. 5.

[I2 7 ]

MOTHER INDIA

those who have passed through the whole course of
western education." If the child be sent to school at
all, it is more often to put her in a safe place out of
the family's way, rather than to give her instruction for
which is felt so faint a need and so great a distrust.

To use the words of Mr. B. Mukherjee, M.A.,
F.R.E.S.: 11

The strict social system which makes the marriage of a
girl religiously compulsory at the age of twelve or so also
puts an end to all hope of continuing the education of the
ordinary Hindu girl beyond the [marriageable] age.

It is estimated that over 73 per cent, of the total
number of girls at school are withdrawn before they
achieve literacy, and in the year 1922, in the great
Bengal Presidency, out of every hundred girls under
instruction but one was studying above the primary
stage, 12

Such small advance as has been achieved, in the des-
perately up-hill attempt to bestow literacy upon the
women of India, represents, first and foremost, a steady
and patient effort of persuasion on the part of the
British Government; second, the toil of British and
American missionaries; and, third, the ability of the
most progressive Indians to conceive and effect the
transmission of thought into deed. But it is estimated
that, without a radical change in performance on the
part of the Indians themselves, ninety-five more years

11 Calcutta University Commission Report, Vol. XII, p. 440.

12 Progress of Education in Bengal, J. W. Holme, M.A., Sixth
Quinquennial Review.

[128]

WOMAN THE SPINSTER

of such combined effort will be required to wrest from
hostility and inertia the privilege of primary education
for as much as 12 per cent, of the female population. 11

The Seva Sadan Society, pioneer Indian women's
organization to provide poor women and girls with
training in primary teaching and useful work, was
started in 1908, in Poona, near Bombay. By the latest
report at hand, it has about a thousand pupils. This
society's success shows what the happier women of
India could do for the rest, were they so minded. But
its work is confined wholly to Bombay Presidency;
and unfortunately, it has no counterpart, says the offi-
cial report, in any other part of India.

As will be shown in another chapter, the administra-
tion of education as a province of Government has of
late years rested in Indian hands.

In 1921-2, British India possessed 23,778 girls'
schools, inclusive of all grades, from primary schools to
arts and professional colleges. These schools contained
in the primary stage 1,297,643 pupils, only 24,555 in
the Middle Schools and a still smaller number
5,818 in the High Schools. 1 *

"Although," says the report, "the number of girls
who proceed beyond the primary stage is still lamen-
tably small 30,000 in all India out of a possible
school-going population of fifteen millions still it

18 Cf. Village Schools in India, Mason Olcott, Associated Press,
Calcutta, 1926, p. 90.

14 The figures in this paragraph are drawn from Progress of Edu-
cation in India, 1917-22, Vol. 1L

[129]

MOTHER INDIA

shows an increase of thirty per cent, over the attend-
ance in 1917.""

In Bombay Presidency, in 1924-5 only 2.14. per
cent, of the female population was under instruction of
any kind, 18 while in all India, in 1919, .9 per cent, of
the Hindu female population, and i.i per cent, of the
Muhammadan females, were in school. 17

"It would be perfectly easy to multiply schools in
which little girls would amuse themselves in prepara-
tory classes, and from which they would drift away
gradually during the lower primary stage. The statis-
tical result would be impressive, but the educational
effect would be nil and public money would be inde-
fensibly wasted." 18

But, in the fight for conserving female illiteracy, as
in those for maintaining the ancient midwifery and
for continuing the cloistering of women, the great con*
stant factor on the side of Things-As-They-Were will
be found in the elder women themselves. Out of sheer
loyalty to their gods of heaven and their gods of
earth they would die to keep their daughters like them-
selves.

As that blunt old Sikh farmer-soldier, Captain Hira
Singh Brar, once said, speaking from his seat in the
Legislative Assembly on a measure of reform: 19

18 Progress of Education in India, Vol. I, p. 135.

16 Bombay, 1924-25, Government Central Press, Bombay, 1926, pp,
XV-XVI.

17 Progress of Education in India, 1917-22, Vol. I, p. 126.
**lbid., pp. 138-9.

19 Legislative Assembly Debates, 1925, VoL V, Part III, p. 2830.

WOMAN THE SPINSTER

So many Lalas and Pandits get up on the platforms and
say, "Now the time has come for this reform and that" But
what happens? When they go home and when we meet them
next morning they say, "What can we do? We are helpless
When we went back home, our ladies would not allow us to
do what we wanted to do. They say they do not care what
we talk, but they would not allow us to act accordingly."

Abreast of these priestesses of ancient custom in pre-
serving the illiteracy of women, stands another mighty
influence that of economic self -interest j a man must
marry his daughter or incur an earthly and eternal
penalty that few will face. He can rarely marry her
without paying a dowry so large that it strains his
resources} to which must be added the costs of the wed-
ding costs so excessive that, as a rule, they plunge
him deep into debt. This heavy tax he commonly in-
curs before his daughter reaches her teens. Why, then,
should he spend still more money on her, to educate
her j or why, if he be poor and can use her labor, should
he go without her help and send her to school, since she
is so early to pass forever into another man's service?
The idea has been expressed by Rai Harinath Ghosh,
Bahadur, 20 fellow of Calcutta University:

People naturally prefer to educate their boys, well knowing
that in future they will make them happy and comfortable in
their old age, and glorify their family, whilst the girls, after
marriage, will be at the mercy of others.

** Calcutta University Commission Report, VoL XII, p. 42$.

MOTHER INDIA

To the average Indian father, of whatever estate,
this range of reasoning appears conclusive. And so the
momentous opportunities of the motherhood of India
continue to be intrusted to the wisdom and judgment
of illiterate babies.

Given such a public sentiment toward even rudi-
mentary schooling for girl children, the facts as to
more advanced learning may be easily surmised. Mr.
Mohini Mohan Bhattacharjee, of the Calcutta Univer-
sity faculty, expressed it in these words: 21

The higher education of Indian women . . . may almost
be said to be beyond the scope of practical reform. No Hindu
or Muhammadan woman of an orthodox type has ever joined
a college or even read up to the higher classes in a school. The
girls who receive university education are either Brahmo 22 or
Christian. . . . The time is far distant when the University
will be called upon to make arrangements for the higher edu-
cation of any large or even a decent number of girls in
Bengal.

By the latest available report, the women students
in arts and professional colleges, in all British
India, numbered only 961. But a more representative
tone than that of Mr. Bhattacharjee's rather depreca-
tory words is heard in the frank statement of Rai Satis
Chandra Sen, Bahadur: 2 *

21 Calcutta University Commission Report, Vol. XII, p. 411.

22 The Brahmo or Brahmo Samaj is a sect numbering 6,3^8 per-
sons, as shown in the Census of India of 1921, p. 119.

28 Calcutta University Commission Report, Vol. XII, p 449.

WOMAN THE SPINSTER

Amongst advanced communities in the West, where wometa
ire almost on a footing of equality with men and where every
woman cannot expect to enter upon married life, high edu-
cation may be a necessity to them. But ... the western sys-
tem ... is not only unsuitable, but also demoralising to the
women of India . . . and breaks down the ideals and in-
stincts of Indian womanhood.

There remains, then, the question of education after
marriage. Under present conditions of Indian thought,
this may be dismissed with a word "impracticable." 24
Directly she enters her husband's home, the little wife,
whatever her rank, is at once heavily burdened with
services to her husband, to her mother-in-law and to
the household gods. Child-bearing quickly overwhelms
her and she has neither strength nor leave for other
activities. Further, she must be taught by women, if
taught at all, since women, only, may have access to
her. And so you come to the snake that has swallowed
his tail.

For, as we have just seen, the ban that forbids lit-
eracy to the women of India thereby discourages the
training of women teachers who might break the ban.
Those who have such training barely and feebly suf-
fice for the schools that already exist. Zenana teaching
has thus far languished, an anaemic exotic a failure,
in an undesiring soil.

Returning to the conviction of the uselessness of
spending good money on a daughter's education, this

** The Seva Sadan Society in Bombay has among its pupils a cer-
tain percentage of married women of the laboring class who come
for two or three hours' instruction daily.

MOTHER INDIA

should not be supposed a class matter. Nobles and rich
men share the sentiment with their lesser compatriots.

The point is illustrated in Queen Mary's College in
Lahore. This institution was founded years ago by two
English ladies who saw that the fractional percentage
of Indian girls then receiving education came chiefly
if not wholly from the low castes, whilst the daughters
of princes, the wives and mothers of princes to come,
the future regents, perhaps, for minor sons, were left
in untouched darkness. The undertaking that the two
ladies began enlisted the approval of Government.
The reigning princes, spurred on by the visit of Queen
Mary to India, subscribed a certain sum. This sum
Government tripled. Suitable buildings were erected
and equipped, and there the liberality of the princes
practically ceased.

For, as will be found in every direction in which the
trait can be expressed, the raising of a building as a
monument to his name, be it school, hospital, or what
not, interests the wealthy Indian j but for its mainte-
nance in service he can rarely if ever be induced to give
one penny. In this case it was necessary, in order to
combat initial indifference, to present schooling prac-
tically free. Today, the charges have been advanced to
stand approximately thus: day scholars, junior, $1.50
per month j senior, $3.00 per month j boarding scholars,
$10 to $20 per month, inclusive of all tuition, board,
laundry, and ordinary medical treatment.

These terms contemplate payment only for the time
actually spent at college. And still some of the fathers

WOMAN THE SPINSTER

are both slow and disputatious over the settlement of
accounts. "You send a bill of two rupees [$.66] for
stationery, all used up in your school by my two daugh-
ters in only two months. I consider this bill excessive.
They should not be allowed to use so much costly
material} it is not right. It should not be paid,'* pro-
tests one personage; and the representative of another
conducts a three weeks' correspondence of inquiry, re-
monstrance, and reproach over a charge for two yards
of ribbon to tie up a little girl's bonnie black locks.

Partly because of the original policy of nominal
charges adopted by Government to secure an entering
wedge, partly because of their traditional dissociation
of women and letters, the rich men of India as a whole
remain today still convinced at heart that, if indeed
their daughters are to be schooled at all, then Govern-
ment should give them schooling free of charge.

Queen Mary's College, a charming place, with class-
rooms, dormitories, common rooms and gardens suit-
ably and attractively designed, is staffed by British
ladies of university training. The curriculum is planned
to suit the needs of the students. Instruction is given in
the several languages of the pupils Arabic, Urdu,
Hindi, etc., and, against the girls' pleas, native dress is
firmly required lest the elders at home take fright
of a contagion of western ideas. Throughout the
school's varied activities, the continuous effort is to
teach cleanliness of habit} and marks are given not
only on scholarship but on helpfulness, tidiness, truth-
fulness, and the sporting spirit.

MOTHER INDIA

Outdoor games in the gardens are encouraged ta
the utmost possible degree, and a prettier sight would
be hard to find than a score or so of these really lovely
little gazelle-eyed maidens playing about in their float-
ing gauzes of blue and rose and every rainbow hue.

"They have not ginger enough for good tennis,"
one of the teachers admits, "but then, they have just
emerged from the hands of grandmothers who think
it improper for little girls even to walk fast. Do you
see that lively small thing in pink and gold? When
she first came, two terms ago, she truly maintained
that her 'legs wouldn't run.* Now she is one of the
best at games,

"But what a pity it is," the teacher continues, "to
think of the life of dead passivity to which, in a year
or two at best, they will all have relapsed!"

"Will they carry into that after-life much of what
they have learned here?" I ask.

"Think of the huge pervading influence that will
encompass them! The old palace zenana, crowded with
women bowed under traditions as fixed as death itself!
Where would these delicate children find strength to
hold their own alone, through year upon year of that
ancient, changeless, smothering domination? Our best
hope is that they may, somehow, transmit a little of
tonic thought to their children; that they may send
their daughters to us; and that so, each generation
adding its bit, the end may justify our work."

Queen Mary's is the only school in all India insti-
tuted especially for ladies of rank. Not unnaturally,

136]

WOMAN THE SPINSTER

therefore, some of the new Indian officials, themselves
without rank other than that which office gives., covet
the social prestige of enrolling their daughters kt
Queen Mary's. The question of enrollment rests as yet
with an English Commissioner, and the Commissioner
lets the young climbers in. With the result that the
princes, displeased, are sending fewer of their children
than of yore.

"Shall our daughters be subjected to the presence
of daughters of babus of upstart Bengali politicians}"
they exclaim, leaving no doubt as to the reply.

And some of the resident faculty, mindful of the
original purpose of the school, anxiously question:

"Is it wise to drive away the young princesses? Their
future influence is potentially so much further-reach-
ing than that of other women, however intelligent.
Should we not strain all points to get and to hold
them?"

But to this question, when asked direct, the Commis-
sioner himself replied:

"In British India we are trying to build a democracy.
As for the Native States, undoubtedly it would be well
to educate the future Maharanis; I say to their fathers,
the Princes: 'If you want to keep for your daughters
a school for their own rank, it can easily be done
but not on Government funds. You must pay for the
school yourselves. 1 But this, invisible as the cost would
be to men of their fortunes, they are

Another center of interest in Lahor
School, occupying the palace of a

[1373

MOTHER INDIA

famous Ranjit Singh, in the heart of the old city, just
off the bazaar. The head of this institution is an ex-
tremely able Indian lady, Miss K. M. Bose, of the
third generation of an Indian Christian family. Miss
Bose's firm and powerful character, her liberal and
genial spirit, her strong influence and fine mind, indi-
cate the possibilities of Indian womanhood set free.

In Victoria School are five hundred girl pupils.
*Some are rich, some poor," says Miss Bose, "but all
are of good caste, and all are daughters of the leading
men of the city. If we took lower caste children here,
it would increase expense to an impossible degree. The
others would neither sit nor eat with them. Separate
classes would have to be maintained, an almost double
teaching staff employed, and so on through innumer-
able embarrassments.

<cc The tuition fees?* Merely nominal; we Indians
will not pay for the education of our daughters. In days
but just gone by, the richest refused to pay even for
lesson books. Books, teaching, and all, had at first to
be given free, or we should have got no pupils. This
school is maintained by Government grant and by pri-
yate subscriptions from England."

Many rooms on many floors honeycomb the old bar-
ren rabbit-warren of a palace, each chamber filled with
children, from mites of four or five in Montessori
classes up to big, hearty Muhammadan girls of fifteen
or sixteen, not yet given in marriage. Like Queen
Mary's, this is a strict purdah school. The eye of man
may not gaze upon it. When it is necessary to intro-

WOMAN THE pPJNSTER

duce some learned pundit to teach his pundit's spe-
cialty, he is separated from the class he teaches by a
long, deep, thick, and wholly competent curtain. And
he is chosen, not only for learning, but also for totter-
ing age.

"I am responsible for these schools," says the Com-
missioner, smiling ruefully, "and yet, being a man, I
may never inspect them!"

Work, in Victoria School, is done in six languages
Urdu, Persian, Hindi, Punjabi, and Sanskrit, with
optional English.

"We give no books to the children until they can
really read," says Miss Bose. "Otherwise they merely
memorize, learning nothing." 25 And the whole aim
and hope of the scheme is to implant in the girls*
minds something so definitely applicable to their fu-
ture life in the zenana that some part of it may endure
alive through the years of dark and narrow things so
soon to come.

Reading, writing, arithmetic enough to keep simple
household accounts; a little history j sewing which
art, by the way, is almost unknown to most of the
women of India j a little drawing and music; habits of
cleanliness and sanitary observance both subjects of
incredible difficulty; first aid, to save themselves and
their future babies as far as may be from the barbari-

25 The Muslim Indian boy may be letter-perfect in long sections of
the Arabic Koran without understanding one word that he speaks;
similarly the young Hindu, so both English and Indian teachers tes-
tify, easily learns by rote whole chapters of text whose words are
mere meaningless sounds to his mind.

MOTHER INDIA

ties of the domestic code these are the main studies in
this practical institution. Added to them is simple cook-
ing, especially cooking for infants and invalids, using
always the native type of stove and utensils j and the
handling and serving of food, with particular empha-
sis on keeping it clean and off the floor.

"Their cooking, in later life, they would never by
nature do with their own hands, but would leave en-
tirely to filthy servants, whence come much sickness
and death," says the instructress. "Our effort here is
to give them a conviction of the use and beauty of
cleanliness and order in all things.' 1

Miss L. Sorabji, the Indian lady-principal of the
Eden High School for girls at Dacca, thus discreetly
suggests the nature of the teacher's struggle: 28

Undesirable home influences are a great hindrance to prog-
ress. Unpunctuality, sloth, untidiness, carelessness regarding
the laws of health and sanitation, untruth fulness, irresponsi-
bility, absence of any code of honour, lack of home discipline,
arc some of the difficulties we have to contend with in our
schools. Character-building is what is most needed.

And the patient upbuilding of a public opinion
that, eventually, may create and sustain a genuine and
practical Indian movement toward self-help.

At present one beholds a curious spectacle: the
daughters of rich landlords} of haughty Brahman
plutocrats} of militant nationalist politicians, ferocious

f f Calcutta University Commission Report, VoL XII, p. 453.

[HO]

WOMAN THE SPINSTER

denouncers o the white man and all his works, fed
and lodged by the dimes and sixpences of dear old
ladies in Illinois and Derbyshire, and taught the a-b-c
of responsible living by despised Christians and outcaste
apostates.

PART 111

Interlude

THE BRAHMAN

Rattling south by rail, out of Bengal into Madras.
Square masses of elephant-colored rock piled up to
build rectangular hills, sitting one upon another in
segments, like Elephant Gods on pedestals. Miles
and more miles of it.

On and on. Then a softer country, where the earth
is orange and the only trees are small-topped palms
scratched long across the sky like penstrokes ending in
a splutter.

Much cultivation, rice fields marked off in slips and
fragments by hand-high earth-ridges to hold the pre-
cious water. Little dark people with cherry-colored
garments, almost black people, with big, bristling mops
of curly black hair, drawing water out of wells as they
drew it a thousand years ago, or threshing grain under
the circling feet of bullocks. Stands of sugar cane,
high and four-square. Small clay villages, each small
clay house eclipsed under a big round palm-leaf roof
like a candle-snuffer. Flocks of orange-colored goats.
Patches of orange, on the ground palm-nuts for betel
chewing, spread out to dry. Big orange hawks with
proud, white heads. Orange afterglow of sunset, flood-
ing orange over the stubble fields of rice. An orange

[145]

MOTHER INDIA

world, punctuated by black human bodies with cherry-
colored splashes.

Madras, citadel of Brahmanic Hinduism. Citadel
also of the remnant of the ancient folk, the dark-
skinned Dravidians. Brahmanic Hinduism broke them,
cast them down and tramped upon them, commanded
them in their multi-millions to be pariahs, outcasts,
ignorant and poor. Then came the Briton, for what-
ever reason, establishing peace, order, and such measure
of democracy as could survive in the soil.

Gradually the Dravidian raised his eyes, and then,
most timidly, his head. With him, also, the multitudes
of the low castes of the Brahman's world. And noW
all these, become an Anti-Brahman party, had de-
veloped strength enough, for the time at least, to
snatch from the Brahman his political majority in the
Legislative Council of Madras Presidency. 1 Which, in
itself, constituted an epoch in Indian history.

With one of these low-caste men become rich, re-
spected and politically powerful, I sat in private con-
ference, in the city of Madras. A little, vivacious per-
son he was, full of heat and free of tongue. "Will
you draw me your picture of the Brahman ?" I asked.
He answered and these are his actual words, written
down at the moment:

"Once upon a time, when all men lived according
to their choice, the Brahman was the only fellow who
applied himself to learning. Then, having become

1 In the fall elections of 1926, the Brahmans regained the majority
in the Legislative Council of Madras Presidency.

THE BRAHMAN

learned, and being by nature subtle-minded, he secretly
laid hold upon the sacred books, and secretly wrote into
those books false texts that declared him, the Brah-
man, to be lord over all the people. Ages passed. And
gradually, because the Brahman only could read and
because he gave out his false texts that forbade learn-
ing to others, the people grew to believe him the
Earthly God he called himself and to obey him ac-
cordingly. So in all Hindu India he ruled the spirit
of man, and none dared dispute him, not till England
came with schools for all.

"Now, here in this Province, Madras, we fight the
Brahman. But still he is very strong, because the
might of thousands of years breaks slowly, and he is as
shrewd as a host of demons. He owns the press, he
sways the bench, he holds eighty per cent, of the public
offices, and he terrorizes the people, especially the
women. For we are all superstitious and mostly illit-
erate. The 'Earthly God* has seen to that. Also, he
hates the British, because they keep him from strangling
us. He makes much 'patriotic* outcry, demanding that
the British go. And we we know that if they go now,
before we have hari time to steady ourselves, he will
strangle us again and India will be what it used to be,
a cruel despotism wielded by fat priests against a mass
of slaves, because our imaginations are not yet free
from him. Listen:

"Each Hindu in India pays to the Brahman many
times more than he pays to the State. From the day of
his birth to the day of his death, a man must be feeding

MOTHER INDIA

the Earthly God When a child is born, the Brahman
must be paid} otherwise, the child will not prosper.
Sixteen days afterward, to be cleansed of 'birth pollu-
tion,' the Brahman must be paid. A little later, the
child must be named j and the Brahman must be paid.
In the third month, the baby's hair must be clipped;
and the Brahman must be paid. In the sixth month, we
begin to feed the child solids j and the Brahman must
be paid. When the child begins to walk, the Brahman
must be paid. At the completion of the first year comes
the birthday ceremony and the Brahman must be paid.
At the end of the seventh year the boy's education
begins and the Brahman must be paid well. In well-
to-do families he performs the ceremony by guiding
golden writing-sticks placed in the boy's handj and the
sticks also go to the Brahman.

"When a girl reaches her first birthday, her seventh,
or her ninth, or when a boy is one and a half, or two
years old, or anywhere up to sixteen, comes the be-
trothal, and big pay to the Brahman. Then, when
puberty comes, or earlier, if the marriage is consum-
mated earlier, rich pay to the Brahman. At an eclipse,
the Brahman must be paid heavily. And so it goes on.
When a man dies, the corpse can be removed only after
receiving the blessing of the Brahman, for which he is
paid. At the cremation, again a lot of money must be
paid to many Brahmans. After cremation, every month
for a year, the dead man's son must hold a feast for
Brahmans as great a feast as he can and give them
clothes, ornaments, food and whatever would be dear to

THE BRAHMAN

the dead. For whatever a Brahman eats, drinks or uses
is enjoyed by the dead. Thereafter, once a year, dur-
ing the son's life, he must repeat this observance.

"All such ceremonies and many more the Brahman
calls his 'vested rights/ made so by religious law.
Whoever neglects them goes to eternal damnation.
During the performance of each rite we must wash the
Brahman's feet with water and then we must drink some
of that water from the palm of our hand. The Brah-
man is indolent, produces nothing, and takes to no call-
ing but that of lawyer or government official. In this
Province he numbers one and a half million and the rest
of us, over forty-one millions, feed him.

"Now do you understand that, until we others are
able to hold our own in India, we prefer a distant King
beyond the sea, who gives us peace, justice, something
back for our money and a chance to become free men,
to a million and a half masters, here, who eat us up,
yet say our very touch would pollute them?"

Chapter XI

LESS THAN MEN

The conundrums of India have a way of answering
themselves, when one looks close.

Long and easily we have accepted the catchword
"mysterious India." But "mystery," as far as matters
concrete are concerned, remains such only as long as
one persists in seeking a mysterious cause for the phe-
nomena. Look for a practical cause, as you would do
in any bread-and-butter country not labeled "inscru-
table," and your mystery vanishes in smoke.

"Why, after so many years of British rule, do we
remain 92 per cent, illiterate?" reiterates the Hindu
politician, implying that the blame must be laid at the
ruler's door.

But in naming his figure, he does not call to your
attention a fact which, left to yourself, you would be
slow to guess: he does not tell you that of the 247,-
OOO,OOO inhabitants of British India, about 25 per cent.
60,000,000 have from time immemorial been spe-
cially condemned to illiteracy, even to sub-humanity,
by their brother Indians. Surely, if there be a mystery
in India, it lies here it lies in the Hindu's ability any-
where, under any circumstances, to accuse any man, any
society, any nation, of "race prejudice," so long as he
can be reminded of the existence in India of sixty mil-

[150]

LESS THAN MEN

lion fellow Indians to whom he violently denies the
common rights of man. 1

In the beginning, it is explained, when the light-
skinned ancestors of the present Hindus first came to
India, they found there a darker, thicker-featured na-
tive race, the Dravidians, builders of the great temples
of the South. And the priests of the newcomers desired
that the blood of their people be not mixed with the
native stock, but be kept of one strain. So they declared
Dravidians to be unclean, "untouchable."

Then the old lawmakers, gradually devising the
caste system, placed themselves at the head thereof,
under the title of "earthly gods" Brahmans. Next be-
neath them they put the Kshattryas, or fighting men;
after the fighters, the Vaisyas, or cultivators, upon
whom the two above look down; and finally, the fourth
division, or Sudra caste, born solely to be servants to
the other three. Of these four divisions, themselves
today much subdivided, was built the frame of Hindu
society. Outside and below all caste, in a limbo of scorn
earned by their sins of former existences, must forever
grovel the Untouchables.

1 Indian politicians have for some time been directing a loud and
Continuous fire upon the British Home Government for not finding
means to coerce the Government of the Union of South Africa into
a complaisant attitude toward British Indian immigrants in that
country. It is worthy of note that of the original 130,000 British
Indian immigrants to South Africa, one-third were "Untouchables,"
mostly from Madras Presidency, whose condition in India is indi-
cated in this chapter, and who would find themselves again in such
status, were they to return to Hindu India. The British Indians in
South Africa in 1922 numbered, as shown in the official Year-Book,
a little over 161,000. This figure includes a later immigration of 10,000
traders, and the natural increase of the combined body.

[151]

MOTHER INDIA

A quotation from the rule by which the unfortunates
were nailed to their fate will suffice to show its nature j
the Bhagavata? treating of the murder of a Brahman,
decrees:

Whoever is guilty of it will be condemned at his death to
take the form of one of those insects which feed on filth.
Being reborn long afterwards a Pariah [Untouchable], he
will belong to this caste, and will be blind for more than four
times as many years as there are hairs on the body of a cow.
He can, nevertheless, expiate his crime by feeding forty thou-
sand Brahmins.

Thus, at one sweep, is explained the Untouchable's
existence as such} are justified the indignities heaped
upon him} is emphasized his unspeakable degradation j
and is safeguarded the oppressor from the wrath of
him oppressed. Even as the Hindu husband, by the
horrors imposed upon widowhood, is safeguarded from
a maddened wife's revolt.

If a Brahmin kills a Sudra, 8 it will suffice to efface the sin
altogether if he recites the gayatri [a prayer] a hundred times,

continues the scripture, by opposites driving home its
point.

Leaving the ancient roots of things, and coming
down to the year 1926 A.D., we find the orthodox
Hindu rule as to Untouchables to be roughly this:

1 Chief of the eighteen Pur anas, sacred books of India. The trans-
lation here given is that of the Abb6 Dubois, Hindu Manners, Cwj-
toms and Ceremonies, p. 558.

8 A member of the fourth division, lowest Hindu caste, yet far
above the Untouchable.

LESS THAN MEN

Regarded as if sub-human, the tasks held basest are
reserved for themj dishonor is associated with their
name. Some are permitted to serve only as scavengers
and removers of night soil} some, through the ignor-
ance to which they are condemned, are loathsome in
their habits; and to all of them the privilege of any sort
of teaching is sternly denied. They may neither possess
nor read the Hindu scriptures. No Brahman priest will
minister to them; and, except in rarest instances, they
may not enter a Hindu temple to worship or pray.
Their children may not come to the public schools.
They may not draw water from the public wells; and
if their habitation be in a region where water is scarce
and sources far apart, this means, for them, not greater
consideration from others, but greater suffering and
greater toil.

They may not enter a court of justice; they may not
enter a dispensary to get help for their sick; they may
stop at no inn. In some provinces they may not even use
the public road, and as laborers or agriculturists, they
are continually losers, in that they may not enter the
shops or even pass through the streets where shops are,
but must trust to a haphazard chain of hungry go-be-
tweens to buy or sell their meager wares. Some, in the
abyss of their degradation, are permitted no work at
all. These may sell nothing, not even their own labor.
They may only beg. And even for that purpose they
dare not use the road, but must stand far off, unseen,
and cry out for alms from those who pass. If alms be
given, it must be tossed on the ground, well away from

[153]

MOTHER INDIA

the road, and when the giver is out of sight and the
roads empty then, and not till then, the watcher may
creep up, snatch, and run.

Some, if not all, pollute, beyond caste men's use, any
food upon which their shadow falls. Food, after such
defilement, can only be destroyed.

Others, again, exude "distance pollution" as an ef-
fluvium from their unhappy bodies. If one of these
presumes to approach and linger by a highroad, he
must measure the distance to the highroad. If it be
within two hundred yards, he must carefully place on
the road a green leaf weighted down with a handful
of earth, thereby indicating that he, the unclean, is
within pollution distance of that point. The passing
Brahman, seeing the signal, halts and shouts. The poor
man forthwith takes to his heels, arid only when he has
fled far enough calls back, "I am now two hundred
yards away. Be pleased to pass."

Still others the Puliahs of the Malabar Coast
have been forbidden to build themselves huts, and per-
mitted to construct for houses nothing better than a
sort of leaf awning on poles, or nests in the crotches of
big trees. These may approach no other type of hu-
manity. Dubois recorded that, in his day, a Nair (high-
caste Hindu) meeting a Puliah on the road, was entitled
to stab the offender on the spot. 4 Today the Nair
would hesitate. But still, today, the Puliah may ap-
proach no caste man nearer than sixty or ninety feet.

* Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, pp. 60-1. See also
Three Voyages of Vasco da Gama, Caspar Correa, Hakluyt Society,
London, 1869, p. 155.

[154]

LESS THAN MEN

Under such conditions of preordained misery, cer-
tain communities among the Untouchables have devel-
oped a business in the practice of crime. These com-
munities specialize, one in podcet-picking, another in
burglary, yet others in forging, in highway robbery, in
murder, etc., often combining their special trade with
prostitution as a second industry. Scattered all over
India and known as the Criminal Tribes, they number
today about four and a half million persons.

Now it must not be forgotten that the matter of
Untouchability, like almost all other Hindu concerns,
is woven, warp and woof, into the Hindu religion j and
that the Hindus are a tremendously religiose people.
To quote the words of that prominent Indian, Sir
Surendranath Banerjea: 5

You cannot think of a social question affecting the Hindu
community that is not bound up with religious considerations;
and when divine sanction, in whatever form, is invoked in
aid of a social institution, it sits enthroned in the popular
heart with added firmness and fixity, having its roots in sen-
timent rather than in reason.

And dire experience shows to what lengths of blood-
drenched madness the people can be goaded by a whis-
per that their caste is threatened or that insult is of-
fered to their gods. That this was from the beginning
understood by Government, is shown in an unequivocal
clause in the Queen's Proclamation of December 2,
1858:

* A Nation in Making, London, Humphrey Milford, 1925, p. 3961

[155]

MOTHER INDIA

We do strictly charge and enjoin all those who may be in
authority under us that they abstain from all interference
with the religious belief or worship of our subjects, on pain
of our highest displeasure.

Nevertheless the immediate impulse of the Briton in
India was to espouse the cause of the social victim. The
Directors of the East India Company, as early as 1854,
recommended that "no boy be refused admission to a
Government school or college on ground of caste,"
and stuck to the principle until their authority was sunk
in that of the Crown. Thenceforward it was continually
reaffirmed, yet pushed with a caution that might seem
faint-hearted to one unfamiliar with the extreme deli-
cacy of the ground. Little or nothing was to be gained
in any attempt to impose a foreign idea, by force, on
unready and non-understanding millions.

Nor must the workings of caste be confused with
snobbery. A man's caste is the outward sign of the his-
tory of his soul. To break caste by infringing any one
of the multitudinous caste laws brings down an eternal
penalty. If, as a Hindu, in obeying these laws, you
inflict suffering upon another, that is merely because
his soul-history has placed him in the path of pain.
You have no concern in the matter j neither will he,
thinking as a good Hindu, blame you. For both you
and he are working out your god-appointed destiny.

Today almost all that can be accomplished by civil
law for the Untouchable has been secured. Govern-
ment has freely opened their way, as far as Govern*

LESS THAN MEN

ment can determine, to every educational advantage
and to high offices. And Government's various land-
development and cooperative schemes, steadily increas-
ing, have provided tremendous redeeming agencies and
avenues of escape.

But for Provincial Governments to pass legislation
asserting the rights of every citizen to enjoy public
facilities, such as public schools, is one thing j to enforce
that legislation over enormous countrysides and
through multitudinous small villages without the co-
operation and against the will of the people, is another.
Witness that paragraph in the Madras Government
Order of March 17, 1919, reading:

Children of Panchamas [Untouchables] are admitted only
into 609 schools out of 8,157 in the Presidency, although the
regulations state that no boy is to be refused admission merely
on the ground of caste.

Yet, rightly read, the announcement proclaims a
signal advantage won. Six hundred and nine schools in
a most orthodox province admitting outcastes, as
against only twelve times that number who refuse!

In the Bombay Legislative Council, one day in
August, 1926, they were discussing a resolution to
coerce local boards to permit Untouchables to send
their children to schools, to draw water from public
wells, and to enjoy other common rights of citizenship.
Most of the Hindu members approved in principle.
"But if the resolution is put into effect we would be
faced with a storm of opposition/' demurred one mem-

MOTHER INDIA

her, representative of many others. "Orthodox opinion
is too strong, and while I sympathize with the resolu-
tion I think that . . . given effect, it may have disas-
trous effect." e And he submits that the path of wis-
dom, for friends of the Untouchables, is not to ask for
action, but, instead, to content themselves with verbal
expressions of sympathy, such as his own.

A second Hindu member, with characteristic nimble-
ness, pitchforks the load toward shoulders broad
enough to bear it: 7

I think the British Government have followed a very timid
policy in this presidency. They have refused to take part in
any social legislation. Probably, being an alien Government,
they were afraid that they would be accused of tampering
with the religion of the various communities. In spite of the
Proclamation of Queen Victoria about equality between the
different classes and communities, Government have not given
practical effect to it.

It remains, however, to a Muhammadan, Mr. Noor
Mahomed, of Sind, to strike the practical note: 8

I think the day will not be distant when the people who
are placed by the tyranny of the higher classes into the lower
grade of society . . . will find themselves driven to other
religious folds. There will then be no reason at all for the
Hindu society to complain that Mahomedan or Christian mis-
sionaries are inducing members of depressed classes to change

Bombay Legislative Council Debates, 1926, VoL XVIII, Part IX,
ft 717.

vibid., p. 728.

Ibid., August 5, p. 721.

[158]

LESS THAN MEN

the religion of their birth. . If the Hindu society refuses
to allow other human beings, fellow creatures at that, to at-
tend public schools, and if ... the president of a local board
representing so many lakhs 9 of people in this House refuses
to allow his fellows and brothers the bare elementary human
right of having water to drink, what right have they to ask
for more rights from the bureaucracy? . . . Before we ac-
cuse people coming from other lands, we should see how we
ourselves behave toward our own people. . . . How can [we]
ask for greater political rights when [we ourselves] deny ele-
mentary rights of human beings?

Regulations may prevail to bring the outcaste to
the school door, but his courage may not suffice to get
him across the threshold, for his self-assertion was
done to death centuries ago. So that his admission to
the school will mean, at best, permission to sit on the
veranda and pick up from that distance whatever he
can by his unaided ears.

Says the Village Education Commission: 10

Speaking generally, it is still the case that the caste man
not only does nothing for the enlightenment of the out-
caste, but puts positive obstacles in his way, knowing that if
he is enlightened he can no longer be exploited. Outcastes
who have the temerity to send their children to school even
if the school be in their quarter, so that there can be no com-
plaint of defiling caste children by contact find themselves
subject to such violence and threatening that they yield and

9 A lakh is one hundred thousand.

* Pillage Education in India, London, Oxford University Press,

1022, p. 21.

MOTHER INDIA

withdraw their children. If the outcastes want not only edu-
cation but Christian teaching, the persecution, for a time, is
all the fiercer, for the caste people are afraid that if the out*
castes become Christians they will no longer be available f of
menial service.

An exceedingly small percentage of the outcastes
are yet in school, but he of their number who pursues
education past all the dragons that bar the door is
likely to be one of the best of his kind. And, in spite
of his immemorial history of degradation, the seed of
the power to rise is not dead within him. The Nama-
sudras of Bengal, an Untouchable class there number-
ing about 1,997,500, have, under the encouragement
of the new light, made a vigorous, steady, and success-
ful fight for self-elevation, and have organized to sup-
port schools of their own. By the last report they had
in Bengal over 49,000 children under tuition, of whom
1,025 had reached the High School and 144 the Arts
Colleges, 11 where, because of caste feeling, Govern-
ment has been obliged to set aside special hostels for
their lodging. This community is rapidly raising its
status.

In the Punjab, where Government irrigation work
is destroying many ancient miseries, appears evidence
of a weakening of the ban that bars the outcaste from
the common schools; although some of the Punjab
municipalities have displayed a genius in tricking these
most needy of their citizens out of the privileges of

11 Progress of Education w Bengal, Sixth Quinquennial Review,
P- 83.

160]

LESS THAN MEN

education." Bombay's educational reports also indicate a
significant advance in the percentage of Untouchables
receiving tuition, largely under mission auspices. And
the net results point to some interesting surmises.

Thus, the "depressed classes" have begun holding
annual conferences of delegates to air their wrongs and
to advance their rights. Their special representatives,
now appointed to legislatures and to local bodies, grow
more and more assertive. Their economic situation,
under Government's steady effort, is, in some com-
munities, looking up. With it their sense of manhood
is developing in the shape of resentment of the degra-
dation to which until now they have bowed. Among
them a few men of power and parts are beginning to
stand out.

Finally, their women, as Christian converts, furnish
the main body of Indian teachers for the girls of India
of all castes, and of trained nurses for the hospitals}
both callings despised and rejected by the superior
castes, both necessitating education, and both carrying
the possibility of increasing influence.

The first time that I, personally, approached a rea-
lizing sense of what the doctrine of Untouchability
means, in terms of man's inhumanity to man, was dur-
ing a visit to a child-welfare center in a northerly
Indian city.

The place was crowded with Indian women who had
brought their babies to be examined by the English

i* Cf. Report on the Progress of Education in the Punjab, 1924-251
Lahore, 1926, p. 71.

[161]

MOTHER INDIA

professional in charge, a trained public health nurse*
Toward her their attitude was that of children toward
a wise and loving mother confiding, affectionate,
trusting. And their needs were inclusive. All morning
I had been watching babies washed and weighed and
examined, simple remedies handed out, questions
answered, advice and friendly cautions given, encour-
agement and praise. Just now I happened to be look-
ing at a matronly high-caste woman with an intelli-
gent, clean-cut face. She was loaded with heavy gold
and silver jewelry and wore a silken mantle. She sat
down on the floor to show her baby, unrolling him
from the torn fragment of an old quilt, his only gar-
ment. This revealed his whole little body caked in a
mass of dry and half-dry excreta.

"She appears unconcerned," I remarked to the Sister.
The Sister replied:

"We try to get such women to have napkins for
their babies, but they won't buy them, they won't wash
them themselves, and they won't pay washers to wash
them, although they are quite able to do so. This
woman is well born. Her husband is well educated a
technical man and enjoys a good salary. Sometime
it may please her to hang that bit of quilt out in the
sun in her courtyard, and, when it is dry, to brush off
what will come off. That's all. This, incidentally, helps
explain why infantile diarrhaea spreads through the
families in a district. They will make no attempt what-
ever to keep things clean."

As the Sister spoke, a figure appeared before the

1621

LESS THAN MEN

open doorway a young woman so graceful and with
a face so sweet and appealing as to rivet attention at
once. She carried an ailing baby on her arm, but came
no farther just stood still beyond the doorway, wist-
fully smiling. The Sister, looking up, smiled back.

"Why does she not come in?" I asked.

"She dare not. If she did, all these others would go.
She is an Untouchable an outcaste. She herself would
feel it wicked to set her foot upon that sill."

"She looks at least as decent as they," I remarked.

"Untouchables may be as intelligent as any one
else and you see for yourself that they couldn't be
dirtier," said the Sister. "But such is the custom of
India. Since we can't alter it, we just plod on, trying to
help them all, as best we can."

And so the gentle suppliant waited outside, among a
crowd of others of her kind, till Sister could go to
them, bringing to this one ointment for baby's eyes,
to that one a mixture for baby's cough, and hearing
the story of another.

But they might not bring their little ones in, to the
mercy of the warm bath, as the other women were
doing at will. They might not come to the sewing class.
They might not defile the scales by laying their babies
in its basket, to see what the milk-dole was doing. For
they were all horrible sinners in aeons past, deserving
now neither help nor sympathy while they worked out
their curse.

Chapter XII
BEHOLD, A LIGHT!

Much is said of the inferiority of character that has
resulted from the Untouchables' long degradation,
But evidence of the survival of virtues, through all
the crushing of the centuries, is by no means lacking.
The Mahars, for example, outcastes used by caste vil-
lagers as are the Palers of Madras, practically as
slaves l and for the basest tasks, are now employed by
Government as couriers. In that capacity they are said
to be entirely trustworthy, transporting hundreds of
rupees without abstracting the smallest coin. The Dheds,
Untouchables from whom, in the Bombay region, most
Britons' servants are drawn, and whom few high caste
Indians would tolerate near their persons, are, as a
rule, honest, sober, and faithful.

As to the rating of converts to Christianity there
are now about five million of them opinions differ j
but in any case the fact stands that these converts are
set free, as far as they can grasp freedom, from caste
bonds. The faces of the Hindus are fixed against them,
to be sure. But of the converts of the third generation
many experienced persons are found to say that they
are the hope of India.

1 Joint Select Committee on the Government of India Bill, ipia
Vol II, Minutes of Evidence, p. 188, Rai Bahadur K. V. Reddi;
They are the slaves of the Nation."

BEHOLD, A LIGHT]

So much, thus far, Britain, greatly aided by the
Christian Missions, has accomplished for the outcaste,
by patient, up-hill work, teaching, persuading, encour-
aging, on either side of the social gulf. And the last
few years have seen the rise of new portents in the sky.

One of these is the tendency, in the National Social
Conference and in Hindu political conventions, to de-
clare openly against the oppression of the outcaste. But
these declarations, though eloquent, have as yet borne
little fruit other than words. A second phenomenon is
the appearance of Indian volunteer associations par-
tially pledged against Untouchability. These include
the Servants of India, 2 avowedly political} Lord Sin-
ha's society for the help of the outcastes of Bengal and
Assam ; the Brahmo Samaj, and others. Their work,
useful where it touches, is sporadic, and infinitesimal
compared to the need, but notable in comparison with
the nothingness that went before.

For no such conception is native to India. "All our
Indian social work of today," the most distinguished
of the Brahmo Samaj leaders said to me, "is frankly
an imitation of the English and an outgrowth of their
influence in the land." Again and again I heard the
gist of that statement from the lips of thoughtful In-
dians, in frank acknowledgment of the source of the
budding change.

"The curse of Untouchability prevails to this day in
all parts of India," said Sir Narayan Chandravarkar, 8

a A Brief Account of the Work of the Servants of India Society,
Aryabhushan Press, Poona, 1924, pp. 60-1.

* Hindu reformer, Judge of the High Court of Bombay, quoted in
India in 1920, p. 155.

MOTHER INDIA

adding, "with the liberalizing forces of the British
Government, the problem is leaping into full light.
Thanks to that Government, it has become ... an
all-India problem."

Mr. Gandhi has been less ready to acknowledge
beneficent influence from such a source has, in fact,
described the whole administrative system in India as
"vile beyond description." But for the last five years
his own warfare on Untouchability has not flagged
even though his one unfaltering co-worker therein has
been the British Government, aided preeminently by
the Salvation Army. In its course he reprinted from
the Indian vernacular press a learned Brahman pun-
dit's recent statement on the subject, including this
passage: 4

Untouchability is a necessity for man's growth.

Man has magnetic powers about him. This sakti* is like
milk. It will be damaged by improper contacts. If one can
keep musk and onion together, one may mix Brahmans and
Untouchables.

It should be enough that Untouchables are not denied the
privileges of the other world.

Says Mr. Gandhi, in comment on the pundit's
creed: 6

If it was possible to deny them the privileges of the other
world, it is highly likely that the defenders of the monster
would isolate them even in the other world.

4 Young India, July 29, 1926, p. 268. Mr. Gandhi's phrase quoted
a few lines above will be found in Gandhi's Letters on Indian Af~
fairs, Madras, V. Narayanan and Co., p. 121.

6 Energy, or the power of the Supreme personified.

6 Young India, July 29, 1926.

BEHOLD, A LIGHT!

" Among living Indians," says Professor Rushbrook
Williams/ "Mr. Gandhi has done most to impress upon
his fellow countrymen the necessity for elevating the
depressed classes. , . . When he was at the height of
his reputation, the more orthodox sections of opinion
did not dare to challenge his schemes."

But today the defenders of Untouchability are
myriad, and, though Mr. Gandhi lives his faith, but
few of his supporters have at any time cared to fol-
low him so far.

On January 5, 1925, a mass meeting of Hindus was
held in Bombay to protest against Mr. Gandhi's
"heresy" in attacking Untouchability. The presiding
officer, Mr. Manamohandas Ramji, explained that Un-
touchability rests on a plane with the segregation of
persons afflicted with contagious diseases. Later he in
terpreted the speaker who pointedly suggested lynching
for "heretics" who "threaten the disruption of Hindu
society," to mean only that Hindus are "prepared to
sacrifice their lives for the Hindu religion in order to
preserve its ancient purity." The meeting closed after
appointing a committee specially to undermine Mr.
Gandhi's propaganda.

And it is fair to say that the discussions of Untouch-
ability evoked by successive introductions of the sub-
ject in the great Hindu conventions show mainly by
the heat of the system's defenders that ground has
been won.

*You saw," said Mr. Gandhi, "the squabble that

* India in 19*4'25 P- 264.

[167]

MOTHER INDIA

arose over it, in the Hindu Mahasabha? But Un~
touchability is going, in spite of all opposition, and
going fast. It has degraded Indian humanity. The 'Un-
touchables' are treated as if less than beasts. Their very
shadow defiles in the name of God. I am as strong or
stronger in denouncing Untouchability as I am in de-
nouncing British methods imposed on India. Untouch-
ability for me is more insufferable than British rule.
If Hinduism hugs Untouchability, then Hinduism is
dead and gone." 9

Meantime another and a curious development has
come to the Untouchables' aid. With the rapid In-
dianization of Government services, with the rapid
concessions in Indian autonomy that have characterized
British administration since the World War, an intense
jealousy has arisen between the Hindu three-quarters
and the Muhammadan fourth of the population. This
subject will be treated elsewhere. Here it will suffice
merely to name it as the reason why the Untouchables,
simply because of numbers, have suddenly become an
object of solicitude to the Hindu world. Sir T. W.
Holderness, writing in 1920, put the point thus: 10

The "depressed classes" in India form a vast multitude.
... A question that is agitating Hinduism at the present
moment is as to whether these classes should be counted as

A hot and disorderly demonstration directed against those who
would relax the pains of the Untouchables had persisted in the ses-
sion of this great Hindu Convention of 1926.

Verbal statement to the author. Revised by Mr. Gandhi.

10 Peoples and Problems of India, Revised Edition, London, Wil-
liams and Norgate, 1920, pp. 101-2.

[168]

BEHOLD, A LIGHT!

Hindus or not* Ten years ago the answer would have been
emphatically in the negative. Even now the conservative feel-
ing of the country is for their exclusion. But the conscience
of the more advanced section of the educated Hindus is a
little sensitive on the point. It is awkward to be reminded by
rival Muhammadan politicians that more than one-third of
the supposed total Hindu population is not accepted by Hindus
as a part of themselves, is not allowed the ministration of
Brahman priests, is excluded from Hindu shrines. It is ob-
viously desirable, in presence of such an argument, to claim
the "depressed castes" as within the pale of Hinduism. But
if they are to be so reckoned, logic demands that they should
be treated with greater consideration than at present. Edu-
cated Hindus see this, and the uplifting of these castes figures
prominently on the programmes of Indian social conferences.
But the stoutest-hearted reformer admits to himself that the
difficulties in the way of effective action in this matter are
great, so strong is the hold that caste has on the Indian mind.

But here a fresh element comes in another dis-
turbing fruit of the intrusion of the West a likelihood
that, stimulated by the strange new foreign sympathy,
the Untouchable may not much longer leave his re-
ligious status to be determined at the leisure and pleas-
ure of the Hindu caste man. Islam, utterly democratic,
will readily receive him into full partnership in the
fold. Christianity not only invites him, but will educate
and help him. The moment he accepts either Islam or
Christianity, he is rid of his shame. The question, then,
is chiefly a question of how long it takes a man, ages
oppressed, to summon courage, spirit, and energy to
stand up and shake off the dust.

MOTHER INDIA

In the autumn of 1917, the then Secretary of State
for India, Mr. Montagu, chief advocate of the speedy
Indianization of the Government, sat in Delhi receiv-
ing deputations from such elements of the Indian peo-
ples as were moved to address him on that subject. All
sorts and conditions of men appeared, all sorts of docu-
mentary petitions were submitted, all sorts of angles
and interests. Among these, not meanly represented,
loomed an element new on the Indian political stage
the Untouchables, awake and assertive, in many organ-
ized groups entreating the Secretary's attention.

Without one divergent voice they deprecated the
thought of Home Rule for India. To quote them at
length would be repetition. Their tenor may be suffi-
ciently gathered from two excerpts.

The Panchama Kalvi Abivirthi-Abimana Sanga, a
Madras Presidency outcastes' association, 11 "deprecates
political change and desires only to be saved from the
Brahmin, whose motive in seeking a greater share in the
Government is ... that of the cobra seeking the
charge of a young frog."

The Madras Adi Dravida Jana Sabha, organized
to represent six million Dravidian aborigines of Ma-
dras Presidency, said: 12

The caste system of the Hindus stigmatises us as untouch-
ables. . . . Caste Hindus could not, however, get on without
our assistance. We supplied labour and they enjoyed the fruit,

11 Addresses Presented in India to His Excellency the Viceroy and
the Right Honourable the Secretary of State for India, London,
1918, p. 87.

12 Ibid., pp. 60-1.

[170]

BEHOLD, A LIGHT!

giving us a mere pittance in return. Our improvement in the
social and economic scale began with and is due to the British
Government. The Britishers in India Government officers,
merchants, and last, but not least, Christian missionaries
love us, and we love them in return. Though the general
condition of the community is still very low, there are some
educated men amongst us. But these are not allowed to rise
in society on account of the general stigma attached by the
Hindus to the community. The very names by which these
people refer to us breathe contempt

We need not say that we are strongly opposed to Home
Rule. We shall fight to the last drop of our blood any attempt
to transfer the seat of authority in this country from British
hands to so-called high caste Hindus who have ill-treated us
in the past and would do so again but for the protection of
British laws. Even as it is, our claims, nay, our very existence,
is ignored by the Hindus; and how will they promote our
interests if the control of the administration passes into their
hands?

"We love them," said these spokesmen of the out-
caste and the expression strikes home with a certain
shock. But one is forced to remember that the sorrows
of these particular under-dogs have never before, in
all their dim centuries of history, elicited from any
creature a thought or a helping hand. Here is a tale, as
told to me, to show that even the degradation of ages
cannot kill that in a man which lifts up his heart to his
friend.

It concerns a command of Madrassi Sappers coal-
black Dravidians from around Bangalore Untouch-

MOTHER INDIA

ables all, or almost all. And it happened in the World
War, at the taking of Kut.

"The river," said the witness, a is about three hun-
dred yards wide at that point and swift. Our job was
to cross in pontoons in the dim first gray of the morn-
ing, hoping to surprise the Turk. The duty of the sap-
pers was to take the boats up the night before, under
cover of darkness, and to make them ready; then to
stand back while the combatant troops rowed them-
selves across.

"The sappers did their job. But just as the moment
came to embark our men, the Turk waked up and
opened fire. Our surprise was a washout. But we car-
ried on, all the same.

"Now, the troops could lie flat in the bottom of the
boats, but their rowers must sit on -the thwarts and
pull three hundred yards, slantwise, in point-blank
rifle range. Why, they hadn't a chance!

"What happened? What but those little Madrassis,
pushing forward, all eagerness, begging: 'Sahibs, you
want rifles over there. Rifles, Sahibs, rifles! We are
only sappers. Let us row!'

"So the troops, rushing down, sprang into the boats
and stretched flat. And the sappers jumped into the
thwarts and pulled. And then the Turk's machine-
guns!

"When the boats came back, out of seventy rowers
scarcely a man was left unhurt and many were dead.
But those little sapper fellows ashore, they swarmed
down, hove their dead out on the bank, jumped into

[172]

BEHOLD, A LIGHT!

their places, and, as each boat filled with men, shoved
off into their comrades' fate. That is how the rifles
got over to Kut. And those were coal-black Dravidians,
mind you 'Untouchables,* unless they had turned
Christian which a fair lot of them had."

When the Prince of Wales sailed to India, late in
1921, Mr. Gandhi, then at the height of his popularity,
proclaimed to the Hindu world that the coining visit
was "an insult added to injury," and called for a gen-
eral boycott. 18

Political workers obediently snatched up the torch,
rushing it through their organizations, and the Prince's
landing in Bombay became thereby the signal for mur-
derous riot and destruction. No outbreak occurred
among the responsible part of the population, nor
along the line of progress, which was, of course, well
guarded. But in the remoter areas of the city, hooli-
ganism ran on for several days, with some fifty killings
and four hundred woundings, Indian attacking Indian,
while arson and loot played their ruinous part.

Meanwhile the Prince, seemingly unmoved by the
first unfriendly reception of all his life, proceeded to
carry out his officially arranged programme in and
about the city. On the evening of November 22 it was
scheduled that he should depart for the North.

As he left Government House on the three- or four-
mile drive to the Bombay railway station, his automo-
bile ran unguarded save for the pilot police car that
went before. Where it entered the city, however, a

Gandhi's Letters on Indian Affairs, pp.

[173]

MOTHER INDIA

cordon of police lined the streets on both sides. And
behind that cordon pressed the people the common
poor people of the countryside in their uncountable
thousands^ pressed and pushed until, with the railway
station yet half a mile away, the police line bent and
broke beneath the strain.

Instantly the crowd surged in, closing around the
car, shouting, fighting each other to work nearer
nearer still. What would they do? What was their
temper? God knew! Gandhi's hot words had spread
among them, and God alone, now, could help. Some
reached the running-boards and clung. Others shoved
them off, for one instant to take their places, the next
themselves to be dragged away. And what was this
they shouted? At first nothing could be made of it, in
the bedlam of voices, though those charged with the
safety of the progress strained their ears to catch the
cries.

Then words stood out, continuously chanted, and the
words were these:

"Yuwraf Maharaj ki jai!" "Hail to the Prince!"
And: "Let me see my Prince! Let me see my Prince!
Let me only see my Prince just once before I die!"

The police tried vainly to form again around the
car. Moving at a crawl, quite unprotected now, through
an almost solid mass of shouting humanity, it won
through to the railway station at last.

There, within the barriers that shut off the platform
of the royal train, gathered the dignitaries of the Prov-
ince and the City, to make their formal farewells. To

BEHOLD, A LIGHT!

these His Royal Highness listened, returning due
acknowledgments. Then, clipping short his own last
word, he turned suddenly to the aide beside him.

"How much time left?"

"Three minutes, sir," replied the aide.

"Then drop those barriers and let the people in"-
indicating the mobs outside.

"Our hearts jumped into our mouths," said the men
who told me the tale, "but the barriers, of course, went
down."

Like the sweep of a river in flood the interminable
multitudes rolled in and shouted and adored and
laughed and wept, and, when the train started, ran
alongside the royal carriage till they could run no
more.

After which one or two super-responsible officials
went straight home to bed.

So the Prince of Wales moved northward. And as
he moved, much of his wholesome influence was lost,
through the active hostility of the Indian political
leader.

But if Gandhi's exhortations traveled, so did the
news of the Prince's aspect traveled far and fast, as
such things do amongst primitive peoples.

And when he turned back from his transit of the
Great North Gate the Khyber Pass itself a strange
thing awaited him. A swarm of Untouchables, em-
boldened by news that had reached them, clustered at
the roadside to do him reverence.

[175]

MOTHER INDIA

"Government ki jail" "Hail to the Government !"
they shouted, with cheers that echoed from the barren
hills.

And when the Prince slowed down his car to return
their greetings, they leapt and danced in their ex-
citement.

For nowhere in all their store of memory or of
legend had they any history of an Indian magnate who
had noticed an Untouchable except to scorn him. And
here was a greater than all India contained the son
of the Supreme Power, to them almost divine, who
deigned not only to receive but even to thank them for
their homage! Small wonder that their spirits soared,
that their eyes saw visions, that their tongues laid hold
upon mystic words.

"Look! Look!" they cried to one another. "Behold,
the Light! the Light!"

And such was their exaltation that many of them
somehow worked through to Delhi to add themselves
to the twenty-five thousand of their kind who there
awaited the Prince's coming. The village people from
round about flocked in to join them the simple people
of the soil who know nothing of politics but much of
friendship as shown in works. And all together haunted
the roadside, waiting and hoping for a glimpse of his
face.

At last he came, down the Grand Trunk Road,
toward the Delhi Gate. And in the center of the hosts
of the Untouchables, one, standing higher than the
rest, unfurled a flag.

BEHOLD,~A LIGHT!

"Yuvaraf Maharaj ki jai! Raja ke Eete ki jail*
a Hail to the Prince! Hail to the King's Son!" they all
shouted together, to burst their throats. And the Prince,
while the high-caste Indian spectators wondered and
revolted within themselves at his lack of princely pride,
ordered his car stopped.

Then a spokesman ventured forward, to offer in a
humble little speech the love and fealty of the sixty
millions of the Unclean and to beg the heir to the
throne to intercede for them with his father the King
Emperor, never to abandon them into the hands of
those who despised them and would keep them slaves.

The Prince heard him through. Then whether he
realized the magnitude of what he did, or whether he
acted merely on the impulse of his natural friendly
courtesy toward all the world he did an unheard-of
thing. He stood up stood up, for them, the "worse
than dogs," spoke a few words of kindness, looked
them all over, slowly, and so, with a radiant smile,
gave them his salute.

No sun that had risen in India had witnessed such a
sight. As the car started on, moving slowly not to
crush them, they went almost mad. And again their
eastern tongues clothed their thought. "Brother that
word was truth that our brothers brought us. Behold^
the Light is there indeed! The Light the
his face!"

.NAR1

D.P.R.I
Ace. No

Chapter XIII

GIVE ME OFFICE OR GIVE ME DEATH

Education, some Indian politicians affirm, should
be driven into the Indian masses by compulsory meas-
ures. "England," they say, "introduced compulsory
education at home long ago. Why does she not do so
here? Because, clearly, it suits her purpose to leave the
people ignorant."

To this I took down a hot reply from the lips of the
Raja of Panagal, then anti-Brahman leader of Madras
Presidency.

"Rubbish!" he exclaimed. "What did the Brahmans
do for our education in the five thousand years before
Britain came? I remind you: They asserted their right
to pour hot lead into the ears of the low-caste man who
should dare to study books. All learning belonged to
them, they said. When the Muhammadans swarmed in
and took us, even that was an improvement on the old
Hindu regime. But only in Britain's day did education
become the right of all, with state schools, colleges,
and universities accessible to all castes, communities,
and peoples."

"[The Brahmans] saw well enough," says Dubois, 1
w what a moral ascendancy knowledge would give them
oyer the other castes, and they therefore made a mys-

1 Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, p. 376.

GIVE ME OFFICE OR GIVE ME DEATH

tery of it by taking all possible precautions to prevent
other classes from obtaining access to it."

But the Brahmans, whatever their intellectual
achievement in earliest times, rested quiescent upon
these laurels through the succeeding centuries. They
were content, while denying light to the remainder of
their world, to abide, themselves, in the ever-fading
wisdom of the ever-dimmer past. Says the Abbe Du-
bois again, writing in the beginning of the nineteenth
century: 2

I do not believe that the Brahmins of modern times are, in
any degree, more learned than their ancestors of the time of
Lycurgus and Pythagoras. During this long space of time
many barbarous races have emerged from the darkness of
ignorance, have attained the summit of civilization, and have
extended their intellectual researches . . . yet all this time
the Hindus have been perfectly stationary. We do not find
amongst them any trace of mental or moral improvement, any
sign of advance in the arts and sciences. Every impartial ob-
server must, indeed, admit that they are now very far behind
the peoples who inscribed their names long after them on the
roll of civilized nations.

This was written some half -century before the Brit-
ish Crown assumed the government of India.

During that fifty years a new educational movement
sprang up in the land. The design of Warren Hastings
and later of the East India Company, impelled by the
British Parliament, had been to advance Indian cul-
ture, as such, toward a native fruition. It remained for
2 Ibid., pp. 376-7.

[179]

MOTHER INDIA

a private citizen, one David Hare, an English mer-
chant domiciled in India, to start the wheels turning
the opposite way.

David Hare, no missionary, but an agnostic, was a
man with a conviction. Under its impulse he gave him-
self and his all to "the education and moral improve-
ment of the natives of Bengal." Parallel to him worked
the famous Hindu, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, a solitary
soul fired to action by the status of his own people in
the intellectual and social-ethical world. And these two,
one in purpose, at length joined to create a secular
Hindu College, whose object they announced as "the
tuition of the sons of respectable Hindoos in the Eng-
lish and Indian language and in the literature and
science of Europe and Asia."

The project, however, only roused the wrath and
distrust of the orthodox Hindu. This was in 1817.

A year later three Baptist missionaries, Carey,
Marshman and Ward, founded a still-extant school
near Calcutta. In 1820 the Anglican Church opened a
college. In 1830 Alexander Duff, again with the help
of Ram Mohan Roy, instituted a fourth college for the
giving of western science to India. A network of primi-
tive vernacular schools at that time existed throughout
Bengal, but it was Raja Ram Mohan Roy himself who
continuously urged upon the British authorities the
necessity, if "the improvement of the native popula-
tion" were contemplated, of doing away with the old
code and system, of teaching western sciences, and of

[180]

GIVE ME OFFICE OR GIVE ME DEATH

conducting such teachings in the English language. 8
While these influences were still combating the
earlier attitude of the British with its basic tenet that
Indian education should run along Indian lines, came
a new force into the field one Thomas Babington
Macaulay, to be Chairman of a Committee of Public
Instruction. Lord Macaulay declared, and with tre-
mendous vigor, on the side of the western school. In
the name of honor and of humanity the full light of
western science must, he felt, be given to the Indian
world. And he demanded, 4 with fervor, to know by
what right, when

... we can patronise sound philosophy and true history, we
shall countenance, at the public expense, medical doctrines,
which would disgrace an English farrier, astronomy, which
would move laughter in girls at an English boarding school,
history, abounding with kings thirty feet high, and reigns thirty
thousand years long, and geography, made up of seas of
treacle and seas of butter? . . . What we spend on the
Arabic and Sanskrit colleges is not merely a dead loss to the
cause of truth; it is bounty money paid to raise up champions
of error.

This new advocate, welcomed with acclaim by a few
modernist Hindus facing the condemnation of their
community, finally cast the expenditures of public edu-
cational monies from oriental into western channels.
Departments of Public Instruction were now set up in

8 A Biographical Sketch of David Hare, Peary Qband Mittra, Cal-
cutta, 1877, Raja Ram Mohan Roy's Letter to Lord Amherst
'Minute on Education, T. B. Macaulay, Feb. z> 1835.

MOTHER INDIA

each province and practical steps taken to stimulate
private effort in the establishment of schools and col-
leges.

All this was done with a definitely stated object to
give into the hands of the peoples the key to health
and prosperity and social advance, and to rouse them to
"the development of the vast resources of their coun-
try, . . . and gradually, but certainly, confer upon
them all the advantages which accompany the healthy
increase of wealth and commerce." 5

It should not, however, be understood either that
Government now discouraged oriental learning as such
or that it excluded the vernacular. On the contrary, it
insisted on the proper teaching of the vernacular in
all schools, looking forward to the day when that ve-
hicle should achieve a development sufficient to con-
vey the ideas of modern science. 6 Meantime, it chose
to teach in English rather than in either of the two
classic Indian languages, for the reasons that any one
of the three would have to be learned as a new lan-
guage by all save the most exceptional students, and
that the necessary books did not exist in either eastern
tongue.

Centers of teaching now gradually multiplied. In the
thirty years following 1857, ^ ve universities were es-
tablished in Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Lahore, and
Allahabad. Aside from literacy courses, instruction in

Despatch of Sir Charles Wood, 1854.

6 See Calcutta University Commission Report, Vol. I, Chapter III ;
and Vol. II, Chapter XVIII; also The Educational Despatch of 1854.

[182]

GIVE ME OFFICE OR GIVE ME DEATH

practical, non-literary branches was urged upon the
attention of all minded to learn.

But the difficulty then as now was that commerce,
scientific agriculture, forestry, engineering, teaching,
none of these avenues for service smiled to Indian am-
bition. India as a national entity was ever an unknown
concept to the Indian. And thought for the country at
large holds little or no part in native ethical equipment.

This last-named fact, damaging as it is from our
viewpoint, should be thoughtfully taken as a fact and
not as an accusation. It is the logical fruit of the hon-
estly held doctrines of fate and transmigration and of
the consequent egocentric attitude.

For present purposes, the history of modern India's
educational progress may be passed over, to reach
statistics of today.

In 1923-4 thirteen universities of British India put
forth a total of 1 1,222 graduates. Of these, 7,822 took
their degrees in arts and sciences, 2,046 in law, 446 in
medicine, 140 in engineering, 546 in education, 136 in
commerce, and 86 in agriculture. At the same time, the
universities showed an enrollment of 68,530 under-
graduates, not dissimilarly apportioned/ The high
figures consistently stand opposite the arts and law
courses, while such vital subjects as agriculture, hy-
giene and sanitation, surgery, obstetrics, veterinary sci-
ence and commerce, under whatever aegis offered, still
attract few disciples.

For example, the agricultural school maintained bjr

* Statistical Abstract for British India, 1914-15 $> i923-*4t P- 279.

MOTHER INDIA

the American Presbyterian Mission near Allahabad,
although equipped to receive two hundred scholars,
had in 1926 only fifty men in residence.

"We don't care to be coolies," the majority say,
turning away in disgust when they find that the study
of agriculture demands familiarity with soil and crops.

"If," says the director, "we could guarantee our
graduates a Government office, we should be crowded."

I heard of few technical schools, anywhere in India,
that are pressed for room.

The representative Indian desires a university Arts
degree, yet not for learning's sake, 8 but solely as a
means to public office. To attain this vantage-ground
he will grind cruelly hard, driven by the whip and
spur of his own and his family's ambition, and will
often finally wreck the poor little body that he and his
forebears have already so mercilessly maltreated.

Previous chapters have indicated the nature of this
maltreatment. One of its consequences is to be seen in
the sudden mental drooping and failure the "fad-
ing," as it has come to be called, that so frequently
develops in the brilliant Indian student shortly after
his university years.

Meantime, if, when he stands panting and ex-
hausted, degree in hand, his chosen reward is not
forthcoming, the whole family's disappointment is
bitter, their sense of injury and injustice great.

8 Cf. Mr. Thyagarajaiyer (Indian), Census Superintendent of
Mysore, Census of India, Vol. I, p. 182: "The pursuit of letters
purely as a means for intellectual growth is mostly a figment of the
theorists."

[184]

GIVE ME OFFICE OR GIVE ME DEATH

Then it is that the young man's poverty of alterna-
tives stands most in his light and in that of Mother
India. A land rich in opportunities for usefulness pleads
for the service of his brain and his hands, but tradi-
tion and "pride" make him blind, deaf and callous to
the call.

As Sir Gooroo Dass Banerjee mildly states it: *

The caste system has created in the higher castes a
prejudice against agricultural, technological, and even com-
mercial pursuits.

The university graduate in these latter days may not
be a high-caste man. But if he is not, all the more is he
hungry to assume high-caste customs, since education's
dearest prize is its promise of increased izzat prestige.
Whatever their birth, men disappointed of office are
therefore apt flatly to refuse to turn their energies in
other directions where their superior knowledge and
training would make them infinitely useful to
their less favored brothers. Rather than take employ-
ment which they consider below their newly acquired
dignity, they will sponge forever, idle and unashamed,
on the family to which they belong.

"I am a Bachelor of Arts," said a typical youth,
simply; "I have not been able to secure a suitable post
since my graduation two years ago, so my brother is
supporting me. He, having no B.A., can afford to work
for one-third the wages that my position compels me
to expect."

Calcutta University Commission Report, VoL III, p. 161.

[185]

MOTHER INDIA

Nor had the speaker the faintest suspicion that he
might be presenting himself in an unflattering light.
Even the attempt to capture a degree is held to confer
distinction. A man may and does write after his name,
BJL Plucked" or "B .A. Failed," without exciting the
mirth of his public. 10

A second case among those that came to my personal
attention was that of a young university graduate, dis-
appointed of Government employment, who petitioned
an American business man for relief.

iC Why do you fellows always persist in pushing in
where you're not needed, and then being affronted and
outraged because there's no room?" asked the Ameri-
can, with American bluntness. "How can you possibly
all be Government clerks? Why on earth don't any of
you ever go home to your villages, teach school, or
farm, or do sanitation and give the poor old home town
a lift, out of what you've got? Couldn't you make a
living there all right, while you did a job of work?"

"Doubtless," replied the Indian, patiently. "But you
forget. That is beneath my dignity now. I am a B.A.
Therefore, if you will not help me, I shall commit
suicide."

And he did.

Lord Macaulay, over ninety years ago, observed the
same phenomenon in the attitude of the Indian edu-

18 The terms are actually used in common parlance as if in them-
selves a title, like M.A. or Ph.D. as : "The school ... is now under
an enthusiastic B.A. plucked teacher." Fifteenth Annual Report of
the Society for the Improvement of the Backward Classes. Bengal
6* Assam, Calcutta, 1925, p. 12.

[186]

GIVE ME OFFICE OR GIVE ME DEATH

cated at Government expense. Regarding a petition
presented to his committee by a body of ex-students of
the Sanskrit College, he says: u

The petitioners stated that they had studied in the college
ten or twelve years; that they had made themselves acquainted
with Hindoo literature and science; that they had received
certificates of proficiency; and what is the fruit of all this!

. . "We have but little prospect of bettering our condition

. . the indifference with which we are generally looked
upon by our countrymen leaving no hope of encouragement
and assistance from them." They therefore beg that they
may be recommended . . . for places under the Govern-
ment, not places of high dignity or emolument, but such as
may just enable them to exist. "We want means," they say,
"for a decent living, and for our progressive improvement,
which, however, we cannot obtain without the assistance of
Government, by whom we have been educated and maintained
from childhood." They conclude by representing, very pathet-
ically, that they are sure that it was never the intention of
Government, after behaving so liberally to them during their
education, to abandon them to destitution and neglect.

The petition amounts to a demand for redress
brought against a Government that has inflicted upon
them the injury of a liberal education. "And," com-
ments Macaulay:

I doubt not that they are in the right . . * [for] surely
we might, with advantage, have saved the cost of making
these persons useless and miserable; surely, men may be

u Minute on Education, Feb. 2, 1835.

[187]

MOTHER INDIA

brought up to be burdens to the public at a somewhat
mailer charge to the State.

Sanskrit scholars of a century ago or B.A.'s of today,
whether plucked or feathered, the principle remains
the same, though the spirit has mounted from mild
complaint to bitterness.

All over India, among politicians and intelligentsia,
Government is hotly assailed for its failure to provide
offices for the yearly output of university graduates.
With rancor and seeming conviction, Indian gentlemen
of the highest political leadership hurl charges from
this ground.

"Government," they repeat, "sustains the univer-
sity. Government is responsible for its existence. What
does it mean by accepting our fees for educating us
and then not giving us the only thing we want educa-
tion for? Cursed be the Government!, Come, let us
drive it out and make places for ourselves and our
friends."

Nor is there anywhere that saving humor of public
opinion whose Homeric laugh would greet the Ameri-
can lad, just out of Yale or Harvard or Leland Stan-
ford, who should present his shining sheepskin as a
draft on the Treasury Department, and who should
tragically refuse any form of work save anti-govern-
ment agitation if the draft were not promptly cashed*

[188]

Chapter XIV

WE BOTH MEANT WELL

Between the years 1918 and 1920, compulsory edu-
cation laws for primary grades were, indeed, enacted in
the seven major provinces of India* This was largely
the effect of an Indian political opinion which saw, in
principle, at least, the need of a literate electorate in
a future democracy.

The laws, however, although operative in some few
localities, are permissive in character and have sinte
remained largely inactive * a result partly due to the
fact that the period of their passage was the period of
the "Reforms." "Dyarchy" came in, with its increased
Indianization of Government. Education itself, as a
function of Government, became a "transferred sub-
ject" passing into the hands of Indian provincial min-
isters responsible to elected legislative councils. The
responsibility, and with it the unpopularity to be in-
curred by enforcement of unpopular measures, had

1 For example : "The Bengal Legislature , . . passed an Act intro-
ducing the principle of compulsory primary education in May, 1919;
but it does not appear that a single local authority in the province
has availed itself of the option for which the Act provides" "Pri-
mary Education in Bengal/' London Times, Educational Supplement,
Nov. 13, 1926, P- 484-

A recent official report prepared by Mr. Govindbhai H. Desai,
Naib Dewan of Baroda, by order of the reigning prince, shows that
although that state has had compulsory education for twenty years,
its proportion of literacy is less than that of the adjoining British dis*
tricts where education began much earlier than in Baroda, but whert
compulsion scarcely exists.

[189]

MOTHER INDIA

now changed sides. The Indian ministers, the Indian
municipal boards, found it less easy to shoulder the
burden than it had been to blame their predecessors in
burden-bearing. No elected officer, anywhere, wanted
either to sponsor the running up of budgets or to
dragoon the children of a resentful public into schools
fcndesired.

Compulsory education, moreover, should mean free
education. To build schools and to employ teachers
enough to care for all the children in the land without
charge would mean money galore which must be
taxed out of the people.

In one province the Punjab the Hindu element
in the Legislature tried to meet one aspect of the crux
by saddling the compelling act with a by-law exempt-
ing from school attendance all "Untouchables/ 1 other-
wise known as "depressed classes." This idea, pleasant
as it was for the elite, withered in the hands of un-
sympathetic British authority. As with the Maharajas, 2
so at the other end of the social scale, it would sanction
no class monopoly of public education.

Thus Government spoke. But negative weapons,
ever India's most effective arms, remained unblunted.
How two Punjab cities used them is revealed as fol-
lows: B

The percentage of boys of compulsory age at school has
risen with the introduction of compulsion in Multan from

2 See ante, p. 137.

* Progress of Education in India, Eighth Quinquennial Review,
Vot I, p. 108.

[190]

WE BOTH MEANT WELL

27 to 54 and in Lahore from 50 to 62. Since no prorisioo
has been made at either place for the education of the chil-
dren belonging to the depressed classes and no proceedings
have yet been taken against any defaulting parent, it is im-
probable that a much higher percentage of attendance can be
expected in the near future.

Showing that there are more ways than one to keep
the under-dog in his kennel!

In all British India, the total number of primary
schools, whether for boys or girls, was, by latest offi-
cial report, 4 168,013. Their pupils numbered approxi-
mately 7,000,000. But there are in British India about
thirty-six and a half million children of primary school
age, 5 90 per cent, of whom are scattered in groups
averaging in school attendance forty children each/
The education of these children presents all the diffi-
culties that beset education of difficult folk in other
difficult countries, plus many that are peculiar to India
alone, while offsetting advantages are mainly conspicu-
ous by their absence/

We of America have prided ourselves upon our own
educational efforts for the Philippines, and in India
that performance is frequently cited with wistful re-
spect. Parallels of comparison may therefore be of
interest.

We recall that in the Philippines our educational
work has been seriously burdened by the fact that the

* Statistical Abstract for British India, 1914-15 to 1923-24, p. 265

* Ibid., p. 24.

6 Progress of Education m India 1917-22, VoL II, p.
r Cf . Village Education m India, pp. 176-7.

[191!

MOTHER INDIA

islanders speak eighty-seven dialects 8 and have no
common tongue. Against this, set the two hundred
and twenty-two vernaculars spoken in India/ with no
common tongue.

In the Philippines, again, no alphabet or script aside
from our own is used by the natives. In India fifty
different scripts are employed, having anywhere from
two hundred to five hundred characters eachj and
these are so diverse as to perplex or defeat understand-
ing between dialects.

In the Philippines and in India alike, little or no
current literature exists available or of interest to the
masses, while in both countries many dialects have no
literature at all. In the Philippines and in India alike,
therefore, lack of home use of the shallow-rooted
knowledge gained in the school produces much loss of
literacy much wastage of cost and effort.

In the Philippines, no social bars exist no caste
distinctions except the distinction between cacique and
tao rich man and poor man exploiter and exploited.
In India something like three thousand castes 10 split
into mutually repellent groups the Hindu three-
quarters of the population.

In the Philippines, whatever may be said of the
quality of the native teachers, especially as instructors
in English, their good will suffices to carry them, both
men and women, from the training schools into little

* Population of the Philippine Islands in 1916, H. Otley Beyer,
Manila, 1917, pp. 19-20.

Census of India, 1921, Vol. I, Part I, p. 193.
*' Oxford History of India, p. 37.

[192]

WE BOTH MEANT WELL

and remote villages and to keep them there, for two
or three years at least, delving on their job. In India)
on the contrary, no educated man wants to serve in
the villages. The villages, therefore, are starved for
teachers.

In the Philippines the native population hungers and
thirsts after education and is ready to go all lengths to
acquire it, while rich Filipinos often give handsomely
out of their private means to secure schools for their
own localities. In India, on the contrary, the attitude
of the masses toward education for boys is apathy.
Toward education for girls it is nearer antagonism,
with a general unwillingness on the part of masses and
classes alike to pay any educational cost.

The British Administration in India has without
doubt made serious mistakes in its educational policies.
As to the nature of these mistakes, much may be
learned by reading the Monroe Survey Board's re-
port 11 on education in the Philippine Islands. The
policies most frequently decried as British errors in
India are the very policies that we ourselves, and for
identical reasons, adopted and pursued in our attempt
to educate our Filipino charges. Nothing is easier than
to criticize from results backward, though even from
that vantage-point conclusions vary.

Queen Victoria, in 1858, on the assumption by the
Crown of the direct Government of India, proclaimed
the royal will that: ll

A Survey of the Educational System of the Philippines, ManiL*
Bureau of Printing, 1925.
Foreshadowed in Lord Hardinge's Resolution of 1844.

093]

MOTHER INDIA

So far as may be, our subjects, of whatever race or creed,
be freely and impartially admitted to office in our service, the
dudes of which they may be qualified by their education,
ability, and integrity duly to discharge.

Similarly President McKinley, in his instructions to
the Hon. William H. Taft, as President of the first
Philippines Commission, laid down that: 1S

The natives of the islands . . . shall be afforded the op-
portunity to manage their own local affairs to the fullest
extent of which they are capable, and . which a careful
study of their capacities and observation of the workings of
native control show to be consistent with the maintenance of
law, order, and loyalty.

On both congeries of peoples the effect of these
pronouncements was identical. Their small existing
intelligentsia, ardently desiring office, desired, there-
fore, that type of education which prepares for office-
holding.

Britain, as we have seen, began with another idea
that of developing Indian education on native lines.
But under Indian pressure she soon abandoned her
first policy; 14 the more readily because, counting with*
out the Indian's egocentric mentality, she believed that
by educating the minds and pushing forward the men
already most cultivated she would induce a process of
"infiltration," whereby, through sympathetic native

18 Letter from Ac Secretary of War, Washington, April 7, 1900.
w The Heart of Aryovarto, the Earl of RonaMshay, London, 1925.
Chapters II and IIL

['94]

WE BOTH MEANT WELL

channels, learning converted into suitable forms would
rapidly seep down through the masses.

America, on her side, fell at once to training Fili-
pino youths to assume those duties that President Mc-
Kinley had indicated. At the same time, we poured
into the empty minds of our young Asiatics the history
and literature of our own people, forgetting, in our
ingenuous altruism, the confusion that must result.

Oblivious of the thousand years of laborious nation-
building that linked Patrick Henry to the Witenage-
mot, drunk with the new vocabulary whose rhythm
and thunder they loved to roll upon their nimble
tongues, but whose contents they had no key to guess,
America's new charges at one wild leap cleared the
ages and perched triumphant at Patrick Henry's side:
"Give us liberty or give us death!"

"Self-government is not a thing that can be 'given'
to any people. . . . No people can be 'given' the self-
control of maturity," said President Wilson, 15 com-
menting on the situation so evoked. But such language
found no lodgment in brains without background of
racial experience. For words are built of the life-his-
tory of peoples.

And between the Filipino who had no history, and
the Hindu, whose creative historic period, as we shall
see, is effectively as unrelated to him as the period of
Pericles is unrelated to the modern New York Greek,

Constitutional Government in the United States, Woodrow W3-
son. New York, 1908, pp. 52-3.

[195]

MOTHER INDIA

there was little to choose, in point of power to grasp
the spirit of democracy.

Schools and universities, in the Philippines and in
India, have continued to pour the phrases of western
political-social history into Asiatic minds. Asiatic mem-
ories have caught and held the phrases, supplying
strange meanings from their alien inheritance. The
result in each case has been identical. "All the teaching
we have received . . . has made us clerks or platform
orators," said Mr. Gandhi. 18

But Mr. Gandhi's view sweeps further still: 17

The ordinary meaning of education is a knowledge of let-
ters. To teach boys reading, writing and arithmetic is called
primary education. A peasant earns his bread honestly. He has
ordinary knowledge of the world. He knows fairly well how
he should behave towards his parents, his wife, his children
and his fellow villagers. He understands and observes the
rules of morality. But he cannot write his own name. What
do you propose to do by giving him a knowledge of letters?
Will you add an inch to his happiness? . .

It now follows that it is not necessary to make this educa-
tion compulsory. Our ancient school system is enough. . . .
We consider your [modern] schools to be useless,

On such views as this, the Swarajist leader Lala
Lajpat Rai makes caustic comment: 1$

16 Statement to the author, Ahmedabad, March, 1926.

India* Home Rule, M. K. Gandhi, Ganesh & Co., Madras, 1924,
pp. 97-8, 100, 113.

18 The Problem of National Education in India, George Allen ant
Unwin, London, 1920, pp. 79-80.

[196]

WE BOTH MEANT WELL

There are some good people in India who do, not/ andt
then, talk of the desirability of their country leading a retired,
isolated, and self-contained life. They pine for good old days
and wish them to come back. They sell books which contain
this kind of nonsense. They write poems and songs full of
soft sentimentality. I do not know whether they are idiots or
traitors. I must warn my countrymen most solemnly and ear-
nestly to beware of them and of that kind of literature. . . .
The country must be brought up to the level of the most
modern countries . . in thought and life.

But whose shoulder is being put to the wheel in the
enormous task of bringing 92 per cent, of the popu-
lace of British India 222,000,000 Indian villagers
"up to the level of the most modern countries/' even
in the one detail of literacy? Who is going to do the
heavy a-b-c work of creating an Indian electorate on
whose intelligence the work of a responsible govern-
ment can be based?

A little while ago a certain American Mission Board,
being well replenished in means from home and about
to embark on a new period of work, convened a num-
ber of such Indian gentlemen as were strongest in
citizenship and asked their advice as to future efforts.
The Indian gentlemen, having consulted together,
proposed that all higher education (which is city
work), and also the administration of all funds, be at
once turned over to them, the Indians.

"Does that, then, mean that you see no more use
for Americans in India? "

[197]

MOTHER INDIA

no means! You Americans, of course, will look
after the villages."

"To you, perhaps, it sounds dubious," said a British
Civil Servant of thirty years 5 experience, to whom I
submitted my doubts, "but we who have spent our lives
in the work know that the answer is this: We must just
plod along, giving the people more and yet more edu-
cation, as fast as we can get them to take it, until edu-
cation becomes too general to arrogate to itself, as it
does today, a distinction by rights due only to ability
ind character."

C'98]

Chapter XV

<C WHY IS LIGHT DENIED?"

The illiteracy of India is sometimes attributed to
her poverty a theory as elusive as the famous priority
dispute between the hen and the egg. But Indian po-
litical critics are wont to charge the high illiteracy rate
to the inefficiency, even to the deliberate purpose, of
the sovereign power. Thus, Lala Lajpat Rai, the
Swaraj political leader, refers to the Viceregal Gov-
ernment as having "so far refused even elementary
instruction in the three R's to our masses." * And Mr.
Mahomed Ali Jinnah 2 accusingly asks, "Why is light
denied?"

But, before subscribing to the views of either of
these legislative leaders, before accepting either India's
poverty or Britain's greed as determining the people's
darkness, it may be well to remember the two points
recently examined, and to record a third.

First, of British India's population of two hundred

1 In 1923-24, India's total expenditure of public funds on education,
including municipal, local, Provincial and Central Government con-
tributions, reached 19.9 crores of rupees, or $66,333,300. This sum is
much too small for the work to be done. Nevertheless, when taken
in relation to the total revenue of British India it compares ^not un-
favorably with the educational allotments of other countries. Sec
India tfi *9*4-25> P- 278; and Statistical Abstract for British India, p.
#52.

8 Leader of the Nationalist parry in the Legislature of 1925-26.

[199]

MOTHER INDIA

and forty-seven million persons, about 50 per cent are
women. The people of India, as has been shown, have
steadfastly opposed the education of women. And the
combined efforts of the British Government, the few
other-minded Indians, and the Christian missions, have
thus far succeeded in conferring literacy upon less than
2 per cent, of the womankind. Performing the arith-
metical calculation herein suggested, one arrives at an
approximate figure of 121,000,000, representing Brit-
ish India's illiterate women.

Secondly, reckoned in with the population of British
India 8 are sixty million human beings called "Un-
touchables." To the education of this element the great
Hindu majority has ever been and still is strongly, ac-
tively and effectively opposed. Subtracting from the
Untouchables' total their female half, as having al-
ready been dealt with in the comprehensive figure, and
assuming, in the absence of authoritative figures, 5 per
cent, of literacy among its males, we arrive at another
28,500,000, representing another lot of Indians con-
demned to illiteracy by direct action of the majority
will.

Now, neither with the inhibition of the women nor
with the inhibition of the Untouchables has poverty
anything whatever to do. As to the action of Govern-
ment, it has displayed from the first, both as to women
and as to outcastes, a steadfast effort in behalf of the
inhibited against the dictum of their own people.

Expressed in figures, the fact becomes dearer:

Census of India 1921, VoL I, Part I, p. 225.

[200]

CC WHY IS LIGHT DENIED?"

Illiterate female population of

British India 121,000,000

Illiterate male Untouchables . . 28,500,000

149,500,000
Total population of British

India . . . . 247,000,000

Percentage of the population of

British India kept illiterate

by the deliberate will of the

orthodox Hindu 60.53%

Apart from these two factors appears, however, a
third of significance as great, to appreciate whose
weight one must keep in mind that the total popula-
tion of British India is 90 per cent, rural village
folk.

As long, therefore, as the villages remain untaught,
the all-India percentage of literacy, no matter what
else happens, must continue practically where it is
today hugging the world's low-record line.

But to give primary education to one-eighth of the
human race, scattered over an area of 1,094,300 square
miles, in five hundred thousand little villages, obvi-
ously demands an army of teachers.

Now, consider the problem of recruiting that army
when no native women are available for the job. For;
the village school ma'am, in the India of today, does
not and cannot exist.

Consider the effect on our own task of educating the
children of rural America, from Canada to the Gulf,

[201]

MOTHER INDIA

from the Atlantic to Calif ornia, if we were totally de-
barred from the aid of our legions of women and girls.

No occidental country has ever faced the attempt to
educate its masses under this back-breaking condition.
The richest nation in the world would stand aghast at
the thought.

As for the reason why India's women cannot teach
India's children, that may be re-stated in few words.
Indian women of child-bearing age cannot safely ven-
ture, without special protection, within reach of Indian
men.

It would thus appear clear that if Indian self-gov-
ernment were established tomorrow, and if wealth
tomorrow rushed in, succeeding poverty in the knd,
India, unless she reversed her own views as to her
"Untouchables" and as to her women, must still con-
tinue in the front line of the earth's illiterates.

As to the statement just made concerning women's
unavailability as teachers in village schools, I have
taken it down, just as it stands, in the United Prov-
inces, over the Punjab, in Bengal and Bombay Presi-
dencies, and across Madras, from the lips of Hindu
and Muhammadan officials and educators, from Chris-
tian Indian educators and clergy, from American and
other Mission heads, and from responsible British
administrators, educational, medical, and police. So far
as I know, it is nowhere on official record, nor has it
been made the subject of important mention in the
legislatures. It is one of those things that, to an Indian,
is a natural matter of course. And the white man ad-

[202]

"WHY IS LIGHT DENIED?"

ministering India has deliberately adopted the policy
of keeping silence on such points of avoiding surface
irritations, while he delves at the roots of the job.

"I should not have thought of telling you about it,"
said an Indian gentleman of high position, a strong
nationalist, a life-long social reformer. "It is so ap-
parent to us that we give it no thought. Our attitude
toward women does not permit a woman of character
and of marriageable age to leave the protection of her
family. Those who have ventured to go out to the vil-
lages to teach and they are usually Christians lead
a hard life, until or unless they submit to the incessant
importunities of their male superiors} and their whole
career, success and comfort are determined by the
manner in which they receive such importunities. The
same would apply to women nurses. An appeal to de-
partmental chiefs, since those also are now Indians,
would, as a rule, merely transfer the seat of trouble.
The fact is, we Indians do not credit the possibility of
free and honest women. To us it is against nature. The
two terms cancel each other."

The Calcutta University Commission, made up, as
will be recalled, of British, Muhammadan, and Hindu
professional men, the latter distinguished representa-
tives of their respective communities, expressed the
point as follows: 4

The fact has to be faced that until Bengali men generally
learn the rudiments of respect and chivalry toward women
* Report, Vol. II, Part I, p. 9.

[203]

MOTHER INDIA

who are not living in zenanas, anything like a service of
women teachers will be impossible*

If the localizing adjective "Bengali" were with-
drawn, the Commission's statement would, it seems, as
fairly apply to all India. Mason Olcott * is referring
to the whole field when he says:

On account of social obstacles and dangers, it is practically
impossible for women to teach in the villages, unless they are
accompanied by their husbands.

Treating of the "almost desperate condition" of
mass education in rural parts, for lack of women teach-
ers, the late Director of Public Instruction of the Cen-
tral Provinces says: *

The general conditions of mofussil [rural] life and the
Indian attitude toward professional unmarried women are
such that life for such as are available is usually intolerable.

"No Indian girl can go alone to teach in rural dis-
tricts. If she does, she is ruined," the head of a large
American Mission college in northern India affirmed.
The speaker was a widely experienced woman of the
world, characterized by as matter-of-fact a freedom
from ignorance as from prejudice. "It is disheartening
to know," she went on, "that not one of the young
women that you see running about this campus, be-
tween classroom and classroom, can be used on the

* Village Schools in India, p. 196.

6 The Education of India, Arthur Mayhew, London, Fabcr and
Gwyer, 1926, p. 268.

[204]

C< WHY IS LIGHT DENIED?"

great job of educating India. Not one will go out into
the villages to answer the abysmal need of the country.
Not one dare risk what awaits her there, for it is no
risk, but a certainty. And yet these people cry out to
be given ^//-government !" 7

"Unless women teachers in the mofussil are pro-
vided with protected residences, and enabled to have
elderly and near relatives living with them, it is more
than useless, it is almost cruel, to encourage women tc
become teachers," concludes the Calcutta University
Commission after its prolonged survey. 8

And the authors of an inquiry covering British India,
one of whom is the Indian head of the Y.M.C.A., Mr.
Kanakarayan T. Paul, report: 9

The social difficulties which so militate against an adequate
supply of women teachers are well known, and are immensely
serious for the welfare of the country. All the primary school
work in the villages is preeminently women's work, and yet
the social conditions are such that no single woman can under-
take it. ... The lack of women teachers seems to be all but
insuperable, except as the result of a great social change.

That a social stigma should attach to the woman
who, under such circumstances, chooses to become a
teacher, is perhaps inevitable. One long and closely;
familiar with Indian conditions writes:

. 10

7 Statement to the author, February, 1926.

8 Calcutta University Report, Vol. II, Part I, p. 9-

9 Village Education in India, the Report of a Commission of In-
quiry, Oxford University Press, 1922, p. 08.

Census of India, E. A. H. Blunt, CI.R, O.B.E.. I.C.S., 1911.
VoL XV, pp. 260-1.

[205]

MOTHER INDIA

It is said that there is a feeling that die calling cannot be
pursued by modest women. Prima facie, it is difficult to see
how such a feeling could arise, but the Indian argument to
support it would take, probably, some such form as this: "The
life's object of woman is marriage; if she is married her
household dudes prevent her teaching. If she teaches, she can
have no household duties or else she neglects them. If she has
no household duties she must be unmarried, and the only un-
married women are no better than they should be. 11 If she
neglects her household duties, she is . , no better than she
should be.

This argument might seem to leave room for the
deployment of a rescue contingent drafted from India's
26,800,000 widows, calling them out of their dismal
cloister and into happy constructive work. The possi-
bility of such a move is, indeed, discussed j some efforts
are afoot in that direction., and a certain number of
widows have been trained. Their usefulness, however,
Js almost prohibitively handicapped, in the great
school-shy orthodox field, by the deep-seated religious
conviction that bad luck and the evil eye are the
widow's birthright. But, as writes an authority already
quoted: 12

A far more serious objection is the difficulty ... to saf e-

11 Census of India, 1911, Vol. XV, p. 229. "It is safe to say that
after the age of seventeen or eighteen no females are unmarried who
are not prostitutes or persons suffering from some bodily affliction
such as leprosy or blindness; the number of genuine spinsters over
twenty is exceedingly small and an old maid is the rarest of phe-
nomena." These age figures are set high in order to include the Mu-
hammadan women and the small Christian and Brahmo Samaj ele-
ment, all of whom marry later than the Hindu majority.

12 The Education of India, Arthur Mayhew, p. 268.

f206]

<C WHY IS LIGHT DENIED? "

guard these ladies who take up work outside the family circle.
Their employment without offense or lapse seems possible only
in mission settlements and schools under close and careful su-
pervision. In a general campaign [widows] can play only an
insignificant part.

In other words, the young widow school-teacher
would meet in the villages the same temptations from
within, the same pressure, exaction of complaisance,
and obloquy from without, that await the single girl.

Thus is reached the almost complete ban which today
brands teaching as socially degrading, and which, as an
Indian writer puts it, 13 "condemns women to be eco-
nomically dependent upon men, and makes it impos-
sible for them to engage in any profession other than
that of a housewife."

The rule has, however, its exceptions. In the year
1922, out of British India's 123,500,000 women, 4,391
were studying in teachers' training schools. But of that
4,391, nearly half 2,050 came from the Indian
Christian community, 1 * although this body forms but
1.5 per cent, of the total population. And exceedingly
few of the few who are trained serve their country's
greatest need.

Says a professional educator: "

It is notoriously difficult to induce Indian women of good
position, other than Christians and Brahmos, to undergo train-

i* Reconstructing India, Sir 1C. Visresvaraya, London, P. S. King
and Sons, 1920, p. 243.

14 Progress of Education in India, 1917-22, Vol. II, pp. 14-15.

15 Quinquennial Review of Education in Eastern Assam and
Bengal.

[207]

MOTHER INDIA

ing for the teaching profession; and even of those who are *
trained . . the majority refuse to go to places when they
are wanted.

Now it chanced, in my own case, that I had seen a
good deal of Indian village life before opportunity
arose to visit the women's training schools. When that
opportunity came, I met it, therefore, with rural con-
ditions fresh in mind and with a strong sense of the
overwhelming importance of rural needs in any scheme
for serving the body politic,

"What are you training for?" I asked the students.

"To be teachers," they generally replied.

"Will you teach in the villages?"

"Oh, no!" as though the question were curiously
unintelligent.

"Then who is to teach the village children?"

"Oh Government must see to that."

"And can Government teach without teachers?"

"We cannot tell. Government should arrange."

They apparently felt neither duty nor impulse urg-
ing them to go out among their people. Such senti-
ments, indeed, would have no history in their mental
inheritance; whereas the human instinct of self-pro-
tection would subconsciously bar the notion of an in-
dependent life from crossing their field of thought.

It would seem, then, taking the several elements of
the case into consideration, that utterances such as Mr.
Jinnah's and Lala Lajpat Rai's ie must be classified, at

i See ante, p. i

[208]

"WHY IS LIGHT DENIED?"

best, as relating to the twig-tips, rather than to the root
and trunk, of their "deadly upas tree."

Coming now to the villager himself the cultivator
or the ryoty as he is called one finds him in general
but slightly concerned with the village school. When-
ever his boy can be useful to him to watch the cattle,
to do odd jobs he unhesitatingly pulls him out of
class, whereby is produced a complete uncertainty in
the matter of attendance. Often the ryot is too poor
to keep his little family alive without the help of the
children's labor and of such wages as they can earn.
Sickness, too, plays a large part in keeping school-going
down hookworm, malaria, congenital weakness. Or,
often, the village astrologer, always a final authority,
discovers in the child's horoscope periods inauspicious
for school-going. And in any case, the Indian farmer,
like the typical farmer of all countries, is skeptically
inclined toward innovations. His fathers knew noth-
ing of letters. He knows nothing of letters himself. 17
Therefore who is to tell him that letters are good?
Will letters make the boy a better bargainer? A better
hand at the plow?

"The school curriculum is not sufficiently practical,"
say many of the British working to better it. "Show
the ryot that his boy will be worth more on the land
after a good schooling, and he will find means some-
how to send the boy to school." And such a writer as
the Hindu Sir M. Visvesvaraya does not hesitate to

17 Adult education, in connection with Government's rural coopera-
tive credit movement, is now doing signal work among the peasant
farmers of the Punjab.

MOTHER INDIA

*,

accuse Government of deliberately making economic
education unattractive in order to keep India depend-
ent. 18 The report of Mr. Kanakarayan T. Paul's com-
mittee, based upon its India-wide inspection, gives,
however, different testimony, saying: 19

It is often assumed that the education given in the village
school is despised because it is not practical enough. In many
cases, however, the parent's objection is just the opposite. He
has no desire to have his son taught agriculture, partly because
he thinks he knows far more about that than the teacher, but
still more because his ambition is that his boy should be a
teacher or a clerk. If he finds that such a rise in the scale is
improbable, his enthusiasm for education vanishes. Of the
mental and spiritual value of education ... he is ignorant.

"// is not change in the curriculum in this early
stage," pursues the authority just quoted, "that is
going to affect the efficiency of the school or the
length of school attendance, but the ability and skill
of the teaching staff."

18 Reconstructing India, p. 258.

19 Village Education in India, p. 20.

[210]

Chapter XVI

A COUNSEL OF PERFECTION

It was one of the most eminent of living Indians
who gave me this elucidation of the attitude of a re-
spected Hindu nobleman toward his own "home
town."

"Disease, dirt and ignorance are the characteristics
of my country," he said in his perfect English, sitting
in his city-house library where his long rows of law-
books stand marshaled along the walls. "Take my own
village, where for centuries the head of my family has
been chief. When I, who am now head, left it seven-
teen years ago, it contained some eighteen hundred
inhabitants. When I revisited it, which I did for the
first time a few weeks since, I found that the popula-
tion had dwindled to fewer than six hundred persons.
I was horrified.

"In the school were seventy or eighty boys appar-
ently five or six years old. 'Why are you teaching these
little children such advanced subjects?' I asked.

" 'But they are not as young as you think/ the
school-teacher replied.

"They were stunted that is all; stunted for lack
of intelligent care, for lack of proper food, and from
malaria, which, say what you like about mosquitoes,
comes because people are hungry. Such children, such

MOTHER INDIA

men and women, will be found all over western Ben*
gal. They have no life, no energy.

"My question, therefore, is plain: What have the
British been doing in the last hundred years that my
village should be like this? It is true that they have
turned the Punjab from a desert to a garden, that they
have given food in abundance to millions there. But
what satisfaction is that to me when they let my people
sit in a corner and starve? The British say: 'We had
to establish peace and order before we could take other
matters up'j also, c this is a vast country, we have to
build bridges and roads and irrigation canals.* But
surely, surely, they could have done more, and faster.
And they let my people starve!"

Now this gentleman's village, whose decadence he
so deplored, lies not over four hours by railroad from
the city in which he lives. He is understood to be a
man of large wealth, and himself informed me that
his law practice was highly lucrative, naming an in-
come that would be envied by an eminent lawyer in
New York. Yet he, the one great man of his village,
had left that village without help, advice, leadership,
or even a friendly look-in, for seventeen years, though
it lay but a comfortable afternoon's ride away from
his home. And when at last he visited it and found its
decay, he could see no one to blame but a Government
that has 500,000 such villages to care for, and which
can but work through human hands and human intel-
ligence.

Also, he entirely neglected to mention, in accounting;
[212]

A COUNSEL OF PERFECTION

for the present depopulation of his birthplace, that a
large industrial plant lately erected near it had drawn
away a heavy percentage of the villagers by its oppor-
tunities of gain.

It would be a graceless requital of courtesy to name
the gentleman just quoted. But perhaps I may with-
out offense name another, Sirdar Mohammed Nawaz
Khan, lord of twenty-six villages in Attock District,
northern Punjab.

This young Muslim went for his early education to
the College for Punjab Chiefs, at Lahore, and thence
to the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, to earn a
commission in the Indian Army. During his stay in
England, being from time to time a guest in English
country houses, his attention was caught and fixed by
the attitude of large English landlords toward their
tenants.

Coming as a living illustration of the novel prin-
ciples of landlord's duties laid down by the English
headmaster of his college in Lahore, the thing struck
root in his mind and soon possessed him. Dashing
young soldier that he made, after eighteen months'
service with a Hussar regiment, popular with officers
and men, he resigned his commission and returned to
his estates. "For I see where my place is now," he
said.

There he spends his time, riding from village to
village, working out better conditions, better farming
methods, better sanitation, anything that will improve
the status of his people. Twenty-seven years old and

MOTHER INDIA

with an annual income of some four lakhs of rupees,
he is an enthusiastic dynamo of citizenship, a living
force for good, and the sworn ally of the equally
enthusiastic and hard-working English Deputy Com-
missioner.

Curiously enough, he strongly objects to Govern-
ment's new policy of rapid Indianization of the public
services, takes no interest in Swaraj politics, and less
than none in criticism of Government's efforts to clean
up, educate, and enrich the people. His whole time
goes to vigorous cooperation with Government better-
ment schemes, and to vigorous original effort.

If the good of the people is the object of govern-
ment, then multiplication of the type of Sirdar Mo-
hammed Nawaz Khan, rather than of the talkers,
would produce the strongest argument for more rapid
transfer of responsibility into Indian hands.

Meantime, of those who remain in the little towns
and hamlets, "the upper classes and castes," says Ol-
cott, 1 "are often not only indifferent to the education
of the less fortunate villagers, but are actively opposed
to it, since it is likely to interfere with the unquestion-
ing obedience and service that has been offered by the
lowest castes through the ages."

"There is in rural India very little public opinion in
favour of the education of the common folk," says the
Commission of Inquiry, and "the wealthy land-owner
or even the well-to-do farmer has by no means dis-
covered yet that it is to his interest to educate the agri-
cultural labourer." 2

1 Village Schools in India, p. 93.

2 Village Education in India, p. 26.

[an]

A COUNSEL OF PERFECTION

The village school-teacher is in general some dreary
incompetent, be he old or young a heavy wet blanket
slopped down upon a helpless mass of little limp arms
and legs and empty, born-tired child noddles. Conse-
quently anything duller than the usual Indian village
school this world will hardly produce. Fish-eyed list-
lessness sits upon its brow, and its veins run flat with
boredom.

But I, personally, could find nothing to justify the
belief that melancholy, as distinct from the viewpoint
produced by the Hindu religion, is a necessary inborn
trait of the Indian. The roots of joy certainly live
within young and old. A smile, I found, brings forth
a ready smile } a joke, a laugh; an object of novelty
evokes interest from all ages, in any village gathering;
and serious philosophical consideration crowned with
ripe speech awaits new thoughts. The villagers are dig-
nified, interesting, enlisting people, commanding affec-
tion and regard and well worthy the service that for
the last sixty-odd years they have enjoyed good
men's best effort. Without their active and intelligent
partnership, no native Government better than an
oligarchy can ever exist in India.

But it is only to the Briton that the Indian villager
of today can look for steady, sympathetic and practical
interest and steady, reliable help in his multitudinous
necessities. It is the British Deputy Commissioner,
none other, who Is "his father and his mother," and
upon the mind of that Deputy Commissioner the vil-
lagers' troubles and the villagers' interests sit day and
/light.

MOTHER INDIA

In my own experience! it was an outstanding fact
that in every one of the scores of villages I visited,
from one end of India to the other, I got from the
people a friendly, confiding, happy reception. King
George and the young god Krishna, looking down
from the walls of many a mud cottage, seemed to link
the sources of benefit. All attempts to explain myself
as an American proving futile, since a white face
meant only England to them, an "American" nothing
at all I let it go at that, accepting the welcome that
the work of generations had prepared.

Yet there are so few Britons in India fewer than
200,000 counting every head, man, woman and child
- and there are 500,000 British Indian villages!

"Would not your educated and brilliant young men
of India," I once asked Mr. Gandhi, "be doing better
service to India, if, instead of fighting for political
advantage, social place and, in general, the limelight,
they were to efface themselves, go to the villages, and
give their lives to the people?"

"Ah, yes," Mr. Gandhi replied, "but that is a
counsel of perfection."

To four interesting young Indian political leaders
in Calcutta, men well considered in the city, I put the
same question: "Would not you and all like you best
serve your beloved Mother India by the sacrifice to
her of your personal and political ambitions by los-
ing yourselves in your villages, to work there for the
people, just as so many British, both men and women,
are doing today? In twenty years' time, might not

[216]

A COUNSEL OF PERFECTION

your accomplishment be so great that those political
powers you now vainly and angrily demand would fall
into your hands simply because you had proved your-
selves their fit custodians?"

"Perhaps," said the three. "But talk, also, is work.
Talk is now the only work. Nothing else can be done
till we push the alien out of India."

"If I were running this country, I'd close every
university tomorrow," said the chief executive of a
great American business concern, himself an American
long resident in India, deeply and sympathetically in-
terested in the Indian. "It was a crime to teach them
to be clerks and lawyers and politicians till they'd been
taught to raise food."

"After twenty-odd years of experience in India,"
said an American educator at the head of a large col-
lege, "I have come to the conclusion that the whole
system here is wrong. These people should have had
two generations of primary schools all over the land,
before ever they saw a grammar school} two genera-
tions of grammar schools before the creation of the
first high school} and certainly not before the seventh
or eighth generation should a single Indian university
have opened its doors."

PART

Interlude

MR. GANDHI

A small stone house, such as would pass unremarked
in any small town in America. A wicket gate, a sun-
baked garden, a bare and dean room flooded with light
from a broadside of windows. In the room, sitting on
a floor cushion with his back to a blank wall, a man.
To his right two younger men, near a slant-topped
desk perhaps eighteen inches high. To his left, a back-
less wooden bench for the use of western visitors. If
there are other objects in the room, one does not see
them for interest in the man with his back to the wall.

His head is close-shaven, and such hair as he has
is turning gray. His eyes, small and dark, have a look
of weariness, almost of renunciation, as of one who,
having vainly striven, now withdraws from striving,
unconvinced. Yet from time to time, as he talks, his
eyes flash. His ears are large and conspicuously pro-
truding. His costume, being merely a loin-cloth, ex-
poses his hairy body, his thin, wiry arms, and his bare,
thin, interlaced legs, upon which he sits like Buddha
with the soles of his feet turned up. His hands are
busy with a little wooden spinning-wheel planted on
the ground before him. The right hand twirls the
wheel while the left evolves a cotton thread.

<c 'What is my message to America? * " he repeated,
[221]

MOTHER INDIA

in his light, dispassionate, even voice. "My message
to America is the hum of this spinning-wheel."

Then he speaks at length, slowly, with pauses. And
as he speaks the two young men, his secretaries, lying
over their slant-topped desk, write down every word
he says.

The wheel hums steadily on. And the thread it spins
for America appears and reappears in the pages of
this book.

1222}

Chapter XVII

THE SIN OF THE SALVATION ARMY

"Why, after so many years of British rule, is India
still so poor?" the Indian agitator tirelessly repeats.

If he could but take his eyes from the far horizon
and direct them to things under his feet, he would
.find an answer on every side, crying aloud for honest
thought and labor.

For example, the cattle question, by itself alone,
might determine India's poverty.

India is being eaten up by its own cattle. And even
at that the cattle are starving.

The Live-Stock Census taken over British India in
1919-20 showed a total of 146,055,859 head of
bovine cattle. Of these, 50 per cent., at a flattering
estimate, are reckoned unprofitable. Because of their
uneconomic value, the food they consume, little as it is,
is estimated to represent an annual loss to the country
of $588,000,000, or over four times more than the
total land revenue of British India. 1

The early Hindu leaders, it is surmised, seeing the
importance of the cow to the country, adopted tha
expedient of deifying her, to save her from and for
the people. Accordingly, Hindu India today venerates

* See Proceedings of Board of 'Agriculture of India, at Bangalore,

}am 21, 1924, and following days. Also see Round Table, No. 59,
tine, 1925*

MOTHER INDIA

the cow as holy. In the Legislative Assembly of 1921,
a learned Hindu member phrased the point in a way
that, probably, no Hindu would dispute: *

Call it prejudice, call it passion, call it the height of re*
ligion, but this is an undoubted fact, that in the Hindu mind
nothing is so deep-rooted as the sanctity of the cow.

To kill a cow is one of the worst of sins a deicide.
His Highness, the late Maharaja Scindia of Gwalior,
once had the misfortune to commit that sin. He was
driving a locomotive engine on the opening run over
a railway that he had just built. The cow leaped upon
the track. The engine ran her down before the horri-
fied Prince could forestall his fate. "I think/' he told
a friend, years after, "that I shall never finish paying
for that disaster, in penances and purifications, and in
gifts to the Brahmans."

Prince or peasant, the cow is his holy mother. She
should be present when he dies, that he may hold
her tail as he breathes his last. Were it only for this
reason, she is often kept inside the house, to be in
readiness. When the late Maharaja of Kashmir was
close upon his end, the appointed cow, it is said, re-
fused all inducements to mount to his chamber; where-
fore it became necessary to carry the Prince to the cow,
and with a swiftness that considered the comfort of his
soul only.

*Legis1ative Assembly Debates, 1921, Rai Bahadur Pandit J. li
Bhargava, VoL I, Part I, p. 53p. See also Commentaries of the Great
Afonso Dalboqverqut, translation of Walter de Gray, London, Hak-
luyt Society, 1877. VoL II, p. 7&

[224]

THE SIN OP THE SALVATION ARMY

Also, the five substances of the cow milk, clarified
butter (ghee), curds, dung, and urine, duly set in a row
in five little pots, petitioned in prayer for forgiveness
and assoilment and then mixed together and swal-
lowed, surpass in potency all other means of purifying
soul and body. This combination, known as fancha-
gavia, is of grace sufficient to wipe out even the guilt
of sin intentionally committed. Says the Abbe Dubois: *

Urine is looked upon as the most efficacious for purifying
any kind of uncleanness. I have often seen . . . Hindus fol-
lowing the cows to pasture, waiting for the moment when
they could collect the precious liquid in vessels of brass, and
carrying it away while still warm to their houses. I have also
seen them waiting to catch it in the hollow of their hands,
drinking some of it and rubbing their faces and heads with
the rest. Rubbing it in this way is supposed to wash away all
external uncleanness, and drinking it, to cleanse all internal
impurity.

Very holy men, adds the Abbe, drink it daily. And
orthodox India, in these fundamentals, has changed
not a whit since the Abbe's time.

We of the West may reflect at our leisure that to
this eventual expedient are we driving our orthodox
Hindu acquaintances when, whether in India or in
America, we, cow-eaters, insist on taking them in greet-
ing by the hand. One orthodox Prince, at least, ob-
serves the precaution, when going into European so-
ciety, always to wear gloves. But it is told of him that,

* Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, p. 43- See also pp. l
195 and

MOTHER INDIA

at a certain London dinner party, when he had re-
moved his gloves, the lady beside him chanced to ob-
serve a ring that he wore.

"What a beautiful stone, your Highness!" she re-
marked. "May I look at it?"

"Certainly," said he, and, removing the ring from
his finger, laid it by her plate.

The lady, a person of rank, turned the jewel this
way and that, held it up to the light, admired it as it
deserved, and, with thanks, laid it beside the plate of
the owner. The latter then, by a sidewise glance, indi-
cated the ring to his own attendant who stood behind
his chair.

"Wash it," ordered the Prince, and, undisturbed,
resumed his conversation.

This seeming digression from the chapter's original
text may help to make clear the nature of the cow's
hold upon India. And, as you see them of mid-morn-
ings, trooping in hundreds out from the cities and vil-
lages on their slow, docile way to jungle pasturage,
you might well fancy they know and are glad of their
place in the people's mind. Bright strings of beads
blue, coral, red adorn their necks. And in their eyes
and the eyes of the bullocks, their sons, lies a look of
slumbrous tranquillity.

That tranquil, far-off gaze is, indeed, often re-
marked and acclaimed by the passing traveler as an out-
ward sign of an inner sense of surrounding love. In
Holland, in England, you may observe an extraordi-
nary tranquillity, peacefulness, friendliness, even in

[226]

THE SIN OF THE SALVATION ARMY

pastured bulls, which may reasonably be attributed to
the gentle handling to which they are accustomed, to
good food and much grooming, and to the freedom
they enjoy. But in India, after examining facts, one is
driven to conclude that the expression in the eyes of
the cows is due partly to low vitality, partly to the
close quarters with humanity in which they live, and
for the rest, simply to the curious cut of the outer
corner of the lid, subtly beautiful like an Aubrey
Beardsley woman's.

Fifty years ago, the political Indians say, India had
pasturage enough for all her cattle. However that may
have been, judged by a western definition of "enough,"
the facts today are otherwise. One of Mr. Gandhi's
Indian writers, Mr. Desai, sees the matter in this way: *

In ancient times and even during the Musalman period,
cattle enjoyed the benefit of common pastures and had also
the free run of the forests. The maintenance of the cattle cost
their owners practically nothing. But the British Government
cast a greedy eye upon this time-honoured property of the
cattle, which could not speak for themselves and which had
none else to speak on their behalf, and confiscated it, some-
times with an increase in the land-revenue in view, and at
other times in order to oblige their friends, such as the mis-
sionaries.

This writer then supports his last-quoted phrase by
the statement that the Salvation Army was once al-
lowed by Government to take up 560 acres of public

* Young India, June 3, 1926, V. G. Desai, p. 200.

[227]

MOTHER INDIA

grazing-ground in Gujarat for farm purposes. He
continues:

The result of this encroachment upon grazing areas has
been that at the present day in India the proportion of grazing
grounds to the total area is the smallest of all countries. . . .
It is not therefore a matter for surprise that our cattle should
have rapidly deteriorated under British rule.

And he cites figures for the United States as lead-
ing the list of happier peoples whose grazing areas are
large.

But unfortunately, in choosing his American statis-
tics, Mr. Desai omits those which carry most value for
needy India. We have, it is true, great grazing areas
but we rotate them and protect them from over-graz-
ing a matter unconceived by the Indian. And even in
the section where this area is widest, our semi-arid and
arid western range country, we devote three-fifths of
our total cultivated ground to raising feed for our cat-
tle. Our cotton belt gives 53 per cent, of its crop area
to live-stock feed, as corn, cow-peas, beans, peanuts,
against 10 per cent, used to grow food for man; our
corn and winter wheat belt uses 75 per cent, of its cul-
tivated land to grow similar forage for its cattle; our
corn belt gives 84 per cent, of its crop-land to forage-
growing, and only 16 per cent, to man's food; and the
North and East devote about 70 per cent, of their crops
to fodder. Seven-tenths of our total crop area is de-
voted to harvested forage. We have 257,000,000 acres
in crops for cattle's feed, against 76,000,000 acres in

[228]

THE SIN OF THE SALVATION ARMY

crops for human food, and we have one milking cow to
every family of 5.*

These are figures that should concern the Indian sin-
cerely interested in the welfare of his great agricultural
country, and I confess to placing them here at such
length in the hope that they may challenge his eye.

Still pursuing the question of India's cattle, Mr,
Gandhi invoked the counsel of an Italian-trained spe-
cialist, domiciled in India. From him came the impa-
tient reply of the practical man who sees small beauty
in the spared rod where childish folly is wasting
precious substance. If the Indian were not so callous,
and so unintelligent as to the needs of his cattle if he
were only compelled to rotate crops and to grow fod-
der as Italians do in circumstances no better than the
Indians', his troubles were done, says this witness, con-
tinuing: 6

Rotated crops require no more expenditure of money than
stable crops. In Java the Dutch forced paddy rotation on the
people a century ago, by the sjambok [rhinoceros-hide whip].
The population of Java has increased from 2 million to 30
million during their rule, and the yield of the rice and sugar
fields has increased proportionately. The change was brought
about not by capital expenditure but by an intelligent govern-
ment using force. In India there is no question of using the
sjambok. We wish to convince, not to compel.

7. S. Department of Agriculture Bulletin No. 895, "Our Forage
Resources," Government Printing Office, 1923, pp. 312-26.

Young India, May 13, 1926, Mr. Galletti-di-Cadilhac, The Cat-
tic Problem/ 1 p. 177.

[220]

MOTHER INDIA

The writer continues: f

Where the cow is a valuable possession [as in Italy], she is
tended with care and love, and crops are grown for her and
palaces are built for her. Here [where] she is merely an object
of veneration, she is left to stand and starve in the public
standing- and starving-grounds, which are miscalled grazing-
grounds in India. India should abolish these places of torture
and breeding-grounds of disease and abortion, and every In-
dian should devote three-fifths or two-thirds of his land to
growing grass and fodder for his cattle.

No one who has seen the public pasturage will be
likely to dispute the accuracy of the last-quoted wit-
ness. "Public standing- and starving-grounds" they are,
nor is there the faintest reason, despite the celebrants of
the past, for supposing that they were ever materially
better. Bernier, the French traveler of the Mussalman
period, testifies: 8

Owing to the great deficiency of pasture land in the Indies,
it is impossible to maintain large numbers of cattle. . . . The
heat is so intense, and the ground so parched, during eight
months of the year, that the beasts of the field, ready to die
of hunger, feed on every kind of filth, like so many swine,

And one's own eyes and common sense, together with
the history of men and forests, are enough to satisfy
one's mind.

Further, the general conditions under which Indian

* Young India, p. 109.

ft Travels in the Mogul Empire, p. 326.

[230]

THE SIN OF THE SALVATION ARMY

animals have lived and propagated might have been
specially devised for breeding down to the worst pos-
sible type.

Cattle experts know that if a hundred and twenty
cows are put without other food on pasturage that will
keep alive only one hundred, the twenty that perish
will be the twenty best milkers j for the reason that a
good milch cow throws her strength to her milk pro-
duction, leaving herself a diminished maintenance re-
serve. The Indian practice of selection by starvation,
therefore, works the breed downhill, through the sur-
vival of the least useful strain. Again, in India the bull
runs with the herds, which may number three hundred
cows. Though he were of the best, such extravagance
must exhaust him. But, on the consistent contrary, he
is so far from the best as to be deliberately of the worst
that can be found.

When a man needs specially to placate the gods, as
upon the death of his father, he may vow a bull to the
temple. And, since one bull will do as well as another,
he naturally chooses his feeblest, his most misshapen.
Or, if he buys the offering, he buys the cheapest and
therefore the poorest to be had. The priests accept the
animal, which, receiving the temple brand, thereupon
becomes holy, goes where he pleases, and serves as sire
to a neighborhood herd. Straying together, starving to-
gether, young and old, better and worse, the poor crea-
tures mingle and transmit to each other and to their
young their manifold flaws and diseases. Half of In-

MOTHER INDIA

dia's cattle,* if given the food consumed by the worse
half, would produce, it is affirmed, more than India's
present total milk supply.

In eastern Bengal, one of the most fertile countries
of the world, pasturage scarcely exists, the country
being entirely taken up with rice-paddy and jute. They
grow no fodder crops for their cattle and feed a bit of
chopped rice-straw or nothing. In western Bengal,
some districts report the loss of 25 per cent, of the
cultivated crops by depredations of hungry stock. The
country being everywhere without fences or hedges, a
man may easily turn his cows into his sleeping neigh-
bors' crops. The sin is small the cows are holy as well
as hungry, and the neighbor's distress is both his illu-
sion and his fate.

I have seen the cow driven by starvation so far from
her natural niceness as to become a scavenger of human
excrement. The sight is common.

In certain districts some green fodder is grown, to be
sure, and during the rains and the earlier cold weather
a poor sort of grass exists on the grazing-grounds of all
but the most desert sections. By January, however, the
gray cracked earth is eaten bare, so to remain until the
late spring rains set in and starvation begins in
earnest.

Mr. Gandhi's correspondent has shown us in the
cow's hunger one of the evil effects of British rule.

9 Samuel Higginbottom, Director of the Allahabad Agricultural In-
stitute, testimony before the Indian Taxation Enquiry Committee,
0924-25.

THE SIN OF THE SALVATION ARMY

And British rule is indeed largely responsible for the
present disastrous condition.

Up to the advent of the British in India, raids great
and small, thieving, banditry and endless internal
broils and warfares kept the country in chronic dis-
tress} and a sure butt of every such activity was the cat-
tle of the attacked. Consequently, with a spasmodic
regularity whose beneficent effect is more easily appre-
ciated today than can well have been possible at the
time, the cattle of any given area were killed off or
driven away, the grazing-grounds of that area, such as
they were, got an interval of rest, and, for the moment,
inbreeding stopped. For new animals had to be slowly
accumulated.

Upon this order broke the British with their self-
elected commitment, first of all, to stop banditry, war-
fare and destruction and to establish peace. The task
was precisely the same that America set for herself in
the Philippines. As we achieved it in the Philippines,
so did the British achieve it in India in a greater in-
terval of time commensurate with the greater area and
population to be pacified. About fifty years ago Brit-
ain's work in this respect, until then all-absorbing,
stood at last almost accomplished. Life and property
under her controlling hand had now become as nearly
safe as is, perhaps, possible. Epidemics, also, were
checked and famine largely forestalled So that,
shielded from enemies that had before kept down their
numbers, men and cattle alike multiplied. And men
must be fed. Therefore Government leased them

[233]

MOTHER INDIA

land 1 * in quantity according to their necessities, that
they might raise food for themselves and not die.

They have raised food for themselves, but they will
not raise food for their mother the cow. So the cow
starves. And the fault is the greed of Britain or of
the Salvation Army. 11

10 By ancient law all land ownership is vested in Government.

11 Government has largely entrusted to the Salvation Army, because
of its conspicuous success therewith, the reformation of the crimi-
nal tribes, nomads, whose first need is domestication in a fixed habitat
where they may be trained to earn an honest and sufficient livelihood
by agriculture, cattle-raising, and handiwork. For this purpose and to
further its excellent work for the Untouchables in general, the Sal-
vation Army has received from Government the use of certain small
and scattered tracts of uncultivated land in Gujerat and elsewhere.
It is to this step that Mr. Gandhi's organ objects. See ante, p. 227.
See, further, Muktifauj, by Commissioner Booth-Tucker, Salvationist
Publishing and Supplies, London.

[234]

Chapter XVIII

THE SACRED COW

Turning from the people and the cattle within their
gates to Government's experimental work on Govern-
ment farms, we find one world-contribution. They have
solved a main domestic problem of low latitudes how
to get milk for the babies.

Only those who have lived in the tropics are likely
to appreciate what this means, in terms of family secu-
rity, health and happiness. In the Philippines our own
hopeful work was nipped in the bud by the Filipiniza-
tion of the Agricultural Department. From that day,
cattle-breeding became a farce, played out in office
chairs by vague young men spinning webs of words
learned by rote in one or another American college,
while a few rough and neglected animals wearied out
a beggar's existence in the corral. And so, as far as
colonial America is concerned, the old notion still
reigned that the cow can neither be bred nor led to
give real milk, in real quantity, in the tropics.

In other words, our work in that field is yet to do.

But the British in India have given us a tremendous
lift and encouragement to effort. On the Imperial
Dairy Farm at Bangalore their breeding experiments
have conclusively proved that, with skill, care and per-

[235]

MOTHER INDIA

sistence, a cow can be developed that will stand up
against the tropical climate for fifteen kctations and
still produce well, doing her duty as a human life-
saver. In the Government Military Dairy Farm at
Lucknow, I saw "Mongia," a half-bred cow sired by
an imported American Friesian on a native dam of
the Punjab Hariana stock. Mongia, with her eighth
calf, had given 16,000 pounds * of milk in a lactation
period of 305 days. With her seventh calf she gave
14,800 pounds. "Edna," another of the herd, had
reached a production of 15,324 in 305 days. Butter-
fat, with these sturdy half-breeds, runs from 4.05 per
cent, in full lactation to about 5.05 per cent, during
hottest weather, which is beyond even our American
home requirements.

Again, these cows' milk production drops scarcely at
all in hot weather. Edna began her 1925 lactation in
August, starting off at a steady seventy-pound daily
yield. Edna and Mongia are, to be sure, admittedly
stars; but the average daily production of the Lucknow
herd of 105 milking cows of Indo-western crosses was
twenty-one pounds per capita, and the work is yet
young.

The best milch breed native to India is the Saniwal,
of the Punjab, which averages only 3,000 pounds a
lactation period, and is too small to be usefully cross-
bred with our big western milch stock. But Govern-
ment within the last ten years have developed on their
farm in Pusa a cross-breed of Saniwal with Mont-
* 2.15 pounds of milk make a quart

[236]

THE SACRED COW

gomery, a second Punjabi strain, that has more than
doubled the previous Saniwal record, while further
interesting experiments, as of crossing native Sindi
stock with imported Ayrshires, are in course of devel-
opment at other Government breeding stations.

The significance of all this may be measured in part
by the fact that over 90 per cent, of the cows in India
give less than 600 pounds of milk a year, or less than
a quart a day. 2

Government began experiments in the year 1912.
Then came the Great War, preventing the bringing of
animals from abroad. Directly the war was over, Gov-
ernment imported from America, for the Lucknow
farm, two more Friesian bulls, "Segis" and "Elmer."
Other experimental stations were similarly supplied,
and the work went on.

Enough has now been accomplished to prove that
stamina goes with the half-breed, and that, beyond the
fifty-fifty point, imported blood weakens the result,
creating extra-susceptibility to the many diseases of the
country. Every cow over half-blood, therefore, is now
bred back to a native bull.

Thus, by selective breeding, by crossing, and by bet-
ter feeding and housing, slowly and steadily the re-
sults of centuries of inbreeding, starvation, infection,
and of breeding from the worst are being conquered j
definite pedigree types are being fixed} and the founda-
tions of distinct breeds are building.

* The Gospel and the Plow, London, 1921, Samuel Higginbottom,
p. 69.

[237]

MOTHER INDIA

The trail is opened, the possibilities revealed. When
the people of India are ready to accept it, their profit
is ready to their hand.

Cattle-lovers, at this point, will be interested in the
fact that India demands a dual-purpose cow, but that
"dual purpose," in India, signifies, not the combination
upon which some of us in America look askance milk
and beef, but milk and muscle!

The sale of cattle as beef is small j the price of beef
in Lucknow in 1926 was two cents a pound. The In-
dians' use for a cow, aside from her religious contribu-
tion earlier described, is to produce, first, milk and but-
ter j second, dung to be used as fuel or to coat the floors
and walls of their dwellings j and, third, to produce
draft animals for the cart and plow. To breed for milk
and for draft might seem a self-canceling proposition.
But such is the demand of the country, and the concern
of Government is to get on with the job and strike the
best possible compromise.

On the Government farms, foreign fodder crops,
such as Egyptian clover, have also been introduced}
much emphasis is laid on fodder developments j and
the use of silage, economically stored in pits, is demon-
strated. Men are sent out to deliver illustrated lectures
and to install silage pits in the villages. And young
pedigreed herd bulls, whether as loans, or as gifts, or to
purchase, are offered to the people.

All the fine animals produced at Lucknow, Pusa,
Bangalore and the other Government plants, are con-*
scientiously watched over by British breeders. In point

THE SACRED COW

of general competence, of cleanliness and order, and
of simple practicality, the plants stand inspection. But
all such matters are utterly foreign to the minds of
the Indian peasant, and for those who might best and
quickest teach the peasant the Indian aristocrat, the
Indian intelligentsia rarely do peasant or cattle cany
any appeal.

With the exception of certain princes of Indian states
who have learned from England to take pride in their
herds, and again with the exception of a mere handful
of estate-holders scattered over the country, cattle-
breeding is left entirely to a generally illiterate class
known as gvalas y who lack enterprise, capital and intel-
ligence to carry on the work.

I saw little, anywhere, to suggest a real appreciation
of the importance of change and much of opposite im-
port, such, for example, as the spectacle of a fine pedi-
greed herd bull, lent by Government for the improve-
ment of the cattle of a village and returned a wreck
from ill-usage. He was brought into a Government
Veterinary Hospital during my visit in the place, and
it needed no testimony other than one's eyes to see that
he had been starved, cruelly beaten and crippled, while
the wounds on one leg, obviously inflicted by blows,
were so badly infected that healing seemed scarcely
possible.

"What will you do?" I asked the British official in
charge.

"Fine the head man of the village, probably* But
it does little good. It is a human trait not to appreciate

[239]

MOTHER INDIA

what one doesn't pay for. And they won't pay for bet *
tering their cattle."

Further, to take at random another point, it is diffi-
cult to get intelligent selective breeding work out of a
people who, for example, refuse to keep record of the
milk-yield of a cow on the ground that to weigh or to
measure the gift of God is impious. "We will not do
it!" the milkers of the Punjab declare. "If we did,
our children would die."

Meantime, aside from the selection of the worst, by
starvation and by breeding from the worst through
sacred runt bulls, a third force works to remove the
best milch cows from a land whose supply of milk is
already tragically short. Government, at Karnal, has
amply demonstrated the feasibility of producing milk
in the country and transporting it to the city in bulk,
even as far as a thousand miles. And the Calcutta co-
operative dairies have shown the possibilities of local
service from suburb to town. But the Indian milk pur-
veyor in general sees naught in that. His practice is to
buy the best up-country young milch cows he can find,
bring them to the city in calf, keep them during their
current lactation, to prolong which he often removes
their ovaries, and then to sell them to the butcher. This,
happens on the grand scale, kills off the best cows, and
thereby constitutes a steady drain on the vital resources
of the country.

The Indian holds that he cannot afford to maintain
an animal in the city during her dry season, and he has
no plan for keeping her elsewhere. Therefore he ex*

[240]

THE SACRED COW

terminates her after her lactation j most of the cost of
her raising goes to waste, and her virtues die with her. 1

Government, all over India, have learned to prepare
for trouble on the annual Muhammadan feast one of
the features of which is the sacrificial killing of cows.
Hindu feeling, at that period, rises to the danger pitch,
and riots, bloodshed and destruction are always the
likely outcome. For is not the embodied Sacrosanctity
that lies at the root of Hinduism being done to deatn
by the infidel in the very arms of her adorers?

Given this preliminary reminder, nothing ;s more
characteristic of the Indian mentality than the balanc-
ing facts pointed out in Mr. Gandhi's Young India o
November 5, 1925:

We forget that a hundred times the number of cows killed
for Kurbani* by the Musalmans are killed for purposes of
trade. . .The cows are almost all owned by Hindus, and
the butchers would find their trade gone if the Hindus re-
fused to sell the cows.

Four weeks after the publication of the leading
article above quoted, Mr. Gandhi returns to the sub-
ject, citing what he describes as "illuminative extracts' 1
from a report of the Indian Industrial Committee sit-
ting in Bengal and the Central Provinces. 5 The hear-
ing is on the commercial slaughter of cows for beef
and hides. The investigating committee asks, concern-

W. Smith, Imperial Dairy Expert, in Agricultural Journal of
India, VoL XVII, Part I, January, 1922.

* The annual Muhammadan feast above mentioned.

* Young India, Nov. 26, 1925, p. 416.

MOTHER INDIA

ing the attitude of the surrounding Hindu populace
toward the industry:

Have these slaughterhouses aroused any local feeling in the
matter?

The witness replies:

They have aroused local feelings of greed and not of indig-
nation. I think you will find that many of the municipal
members are shareholders in these yards. Brahmans and Hin-
dus are also found to be shareholders.

"If there is any such thing as a moral government in
the universe, we must answer for it some day," Mr.
Gandhi's commentor helplessly laments.

This example of the selling of the cow by the Hindu
for slaughter he who will rise in murdering riot if a
Muhammadan, possibly not too averse to the result,
kills a cow outside a Hindu temple door opens a topic
that should perhaps be examined for other than its face
value.

We of the West are continually in danger of mis-
understanding the Indian through supposing that the
mental picture produced by a given word or idea is the
same in weight and significance to him and to us. His
facility in English helps us to this error. We assume
that his thought is like his tongue. He says, for ex-
ample, that he venerates all life and is filled with ten-
derness for all animals. Lecturing in America, he speaks
of the Hindu's sensitive refinement in this direction
and of his shrinking from our gross unspirituality, our

Above: On the Grand Trunk Road.
(See page 66.)

Below: The Deputy Commissioner off
(See pagre 244.)

THE SACRED COW

incomprehension of the sacred unity of the vital spark.

But if you suppose, from these seemingly plain
words, that the average Hindu in India shows what we
would call common humaneness toward animal life,
you go far astray.

To the highly intelligent Brahman foreman of the
Goverment farm at Bangalore, I one day said: "I re-
gret that all over India you torture most bullocks and
some cows by the disjointing of their tails. Look at the
draft bullocks in that cart over there. Every vertebra
in their tails is dislocated. As you are aware, it causes
exquisite pain. Often the tail is broken short off."

"Ah, yes," replied the young Brahman, indiffer-
ently, "it is perfectly true that we do it. But that, you
see, is necessary. The animals would not travel fast
enough unless their tail-nerves are wrenched."

You may stand for hours on the busy Howrah Bridge
in Calcutta, watching the bullock carts pass, without
discovering a dozen animals whose tails are not a zig
zag string of breaks. It is easier, you see, for the driver
to walk with the animal's tail in his hand, twisting its
joints from time to time, than it is to beat the creature
with his stick. If you ride in the bullock cart, however,
with the driver riding before you, you will discover
that, from this position, he has another way of speeding
the gait. With his stick or his long hard toe-nails he
periodically prods his animals' genital glands.

And only the alien in the land will protest.

It is one of the puzzles of India that a man whose
bullock is his best asset will deliberately overload his

[2433

MOTHER INDIA

animal, and then, half starved as it is, will drive it till
it drops dead. The steep hillsides of Madras are a
Calvary of draft bullocks. One sees them, branded
from head to tail, almost raw from brands and blows,
forced up-hill until they fall and die. If a British offi-
cial sees this or any other deed of cruelty, he acts. But
the British are few in the land. Yet far fewer are the
Indians whose sensibilities are touched by the sufferings
of dumb beasts, or whose wrath is aroused by pain and
abuse inflicted upon defenseless creatures.

The practice of $hukd is common in most parts of
India. Its object is to increase and prolong the milk
production of cows. It is committed in several ways, but
usually consists in thrusting a stick on which is bound a
bundle of rough straw into the vagina of the cow and
twisting it about, to produce irritation. The thing gives
intense pain to the cow, and also produces sterility
a matter of indifference to the dairyman, since he will
in any case sell her for slaughter when she dries. Mr.
Gandhi cites authority 6 that out of ten thousand cows
in Calcutta dairy sheds, five thousand are daily sub-
jected to this process.

Mr. Gandhi quotes another authority on the manu-
facture of a dye esteemed by Indians and known as

By feeding the cow only on mango leaves, with no other
form of feed nor even water to drink, the animal passes in
the form of urine a dye which is sold at high rates in the

6 Young India, May 6, 1926, pp. 166-7.

7 Ibid., p. 167.

THE SACRED COW

bazaar. The animal so treated does not last long and dies in
agony.

The young milch cow is usually carrying her calf
when she is brought to the city. The Hindu dairyman
does not want the calf, and his religion forbids him
to kill it. So he finds other means to avoid both sin
and the costs of keeping. In some sections of the coun-
try he will allow it a daily quarter- to half-cup of its
mother's milk, because of a religious teaching that he
who keeps the calf from the cow will himself suffer
in the next life. But the allowance that saves the
owner's soul is too small to save the calf who staggers
about after its mother on the door-to-door milk route
as long as its trembling legs will carry it. When
the end comes, the owner skins the little creature,
sews the skin together, stuffs it crudely with straw,
shoves four sticks up the legs, and, when he goes forth
on the morrow driving his cow, carries his handiwork
over his shoulder. Then, when he stops at a customer's
door to milk, he will plant before the mother the thing
that was her calf, to induce her to milk more freely.
Or again, in large plants, the new-born calves may
be simply tossed upon the morning garbage carts, at
the dairy door, and carried away to the dumps where
they breathe their last among other broken rubbish.

The water buffalo the carabao of the Philippines
is in India an immensely useful creature. The best of
the Delhi blood give yearly from six to ten thousand
pounds of milk carrying from 7.5 to 9 per cent, butter-

[245]

MOTHER INDIA

fat. The buffalo bull makes a powerful draft animal
for cart and plow. But the species is large, and expen-
sive to raise. Therefore it is usual for milk dealers to
starve their buffalo calves outright. Young India 9
quotes testimonies showing various phases of this prac-
tice. One of these draws attention to

. . . the number of buffalo calves . . . being abandoned to
die of starvation in public streets, and often when they fall
down through sheer exhaustion, being mutilated by trams,
motor-cars and carriages. These animals are generally driven
out from the cattle stables at night . . . simply to save all
the milk the mother has, for sale.

Otherwise, the calf is tied to a stake anywhere about
the place and left without food or water till it dies.

The water buffalo, having no sweat-glands, suffers
severely in the hot sun and should never be compelled
to endure it unprotected. Therefore, says another of
Young India's authorities, "one finds that [the starving
buffalo calves] are usually tied in the sunniest part of
the yard. The dairymen appear systematically to use
these methods to kill off the young stock."

And then, turning from city dairymen to country
owners and country regions, Mr. Gandhi gives us this
picture: '

In Gujarat [northern Bombay Presidency], the he-calf is
simply starved off by withholding milk from him. In other
parts he is driven away to the forests to become the prey of

8 May 6, 1926, p. 167.

f Young India, May 6, 1926, p. 167.

[246]

THE SACRED COW

wild beasts. In Bengal he is often tied up in the forest and
left without food, either to starve or be devoured. And yet
the people who do this are those who would not allow an
animal to be killed outright even if it were in extreme suf-
fering!

In this, one is reminded of the fate of the villagers'
cows, which, when they are too diseased or too old to
give further service, are turned out of the village, to
stand and starve till they are too weak to defend them-
selves with heel or horn and then are pulled down and
devoured by the starving village dogs.

Surely no Westerner, even the most meteoric tour-
ist, has passed through India without observing those
dogs. They haunt every railway platform, skulking
along under the car windows. Bad dreams out of pur-
gatory they look, all bones and sores and grisly hol-
lows, their great, undoglike eyes full of terror and fur-
tive cunning, of misery and of hatred. All over the
land they exist in hosts, forever multiplying. In the
towns they dispute with the cows and goats for a scav-
enger's living among the stalls and gutters of the
bazaars. Devoured with disease and vermin, they often
go mad from bites received from mad jackals of the
packs that roam even city parts by night.

And, according to the Hindu creed, nothing can be
done for them. Their breeding may not be stopped,
their number may not be reduced, and since a dog's
touch defiles, their wounds and sores and broken bones
may not be attended.

In this connection an interesting discussion has re-
[247J

MOTHER INDIA

cently developed in the pages of Young India The
incident that gave it birth was the destruction of sixty
mad dogs, collected on the premises of an Ahmedabad
mill-owner. The mill-owner himself, though a Hindu,
had ordered their killing. This act aroused much ill
feeling in the town, and the Hindu Humanitarian
League referred the question to Mr. Gandhi, as a re-
ligious authority, asking:

When Hinduism forbids the taking of the life of any living
being, ... do you think it right to kill rabid dogs? . . .
Are not the man who actually destroys the dogs, as also the
man at whose instance he docs so, both sinners? . . . The
Ahmedabad Municipality ... is soon going to have before
it a resolution for the castration of stray dogs. Does religion
sanction the castration of an animal?

Mr. Gandhi's reply is full of light on Hindu think-
ing:

There can be no two opinions on the fact that Hinduism
regards killing a living being as sinful. . . . Hinduism has
laid down that killing for sacrifice is no htmsa [violence].
This is only a half-truth. . . . But what is inevitable is not
regarded as a sin, so much so that the science of daily practice
has not only declared the inevitable violence involved in kill-
ing for sacrifice as permissible but even regarded it as meri-
torious. . . . [But the man] who is responsible for the pro-
tection of lives under his care and who does not possess the
virtues of the recluse [to heal by spirit], but is capable of

10 October and November, 1026. The issue of November IT, 1926,
gives tb* following figures for cases of hydrophobia treated in the
Civil Hospita/ uf the town of Ahmedabad: Jan. to Dec., 1925*
Jan. to Sept, 1926, 990.

[248]

THE SACRED COW

destroying a rabid dog, is faced with a conflict of duties. If
he kills the dog he commits a sin. If he does not kill it, he
commits a graver sin. So he prefers to commit the lesser one.
... It is therefore a thousand pities that the question of stray
dogs, etc., assumes such a monstrous proportion in this sacred
land of ahimsa [non-violence]. It may be a sin to destroy
rabid dogs and such others as are liable to catch rabies. . . .
It is a sin, it should be a sin, to feed stray dogs.

In the land of ahimsa, the rarest of sins is that of
allowing a crumb of food to a starving dog, or, equally,
of putting him out of his misery. Mr. Gandhi's ap-
proval of the latter step, even as to animals gone mad,
has brought down upon him such an avalanche of
Hindu protest that he sighs aloud under its burden
upon his time.

And since the only remaining resource, castration,
lies under religious ban because it interrupts the or-
dained stages of life, the miseries of the dog, like
many another misery of India, revolves in a circle.

[249]

Chapter XIX

THE QUALITY OF MERCY

"We will pose as protectors of the cow, and quarrel
with Mussalmans in her sacred name, the net result
being that her last condition is worse than the first," *
laments the faithful accuser on Mr. Gandhi's staff, and
again:

"In spite of our boasted spirituality, we are still
sadly backward in point of humanity and kindness to
the lower animals." 2

Legislation for the prevention of cruelty to animals
was enacted in the early years of Crown rule in India.
But such legislation, anywhere, must rest for effective-
ness on public opinion, and the opinion of Mr. Gandhi's
paper is, in this matter, as a voice crying in the wil-
derness, awakening but the faintest of echoes. If the
people feel no compassion} if the police, themselves
drawn from the people, privately consider the law a
silly, perhaps an irreligious law, whose greatest virtue
lies in the chance it gives them to fill their pockets j
and if little or no leaven of another sentiment exists
in the higher classes, Government's purpose, as far as
it means immediate relief, is handicapped indeed.

1 Young India, May 6, 1926, V. G. Desai, p. 167.

2 Ibid., August 26, 1926, p. 303.

[250]

THE QUALITY OF MERCY

Laws in India for the prevention of cruelty to ani-
mals have uniformly originated as Government bills.
Whether of the Central or of the Provincial Adminis-
trations, measures for the protection of animals from
cruelty have been passed over the indifference, if not
over the pronounced hostility, of the Indian repre-
sentation.

Thus, a bill to limit the driving of water buffaloes f
heavily laden, through the hottest hours of the day in
the midst of the hottest season of the year, was intro-
duced in the Bengal Legislative Council by Govern-
ment, on March 16, 1926. In the streets of Calcutta
the sufferings of buffaloes so driven had long been, to
Western susceptibilities, a public scandal. But this pro-
posal for the animals' relief was finally enacted into
Jaw despite the resistance of the leading Indian mer-
chants, who saw in it merely a sentimentality incon-
venient to their trade.

The practice of -phukd, the deliberate daily torture
of the cow in order that the worth of a few more pen-
nies may be wrung from her pain, has been forbidden
and heavily penalized by the Governor-General-in-
Council and by successive provincial laws. Mr. Gandhi
finds room, in the columns of Young India? to print an
Englishman's protest against phukd. But if any mass
of Hindu feeling exists against it, the vitality of that
feeling is insufficient to bring it forth into deeds.

In 1926, the Government of Bombay Presidency
introduced in the Bombay Legislative Council a meas-

8 May 13, 1926, p. 174.

[251.1

MOTHER INDIA

ure * amending the Police Act of the City of Bombay
so that police officers should have power to kill any
animal found in such a condition, whether from hurt
or from disease, that it would be sheer cruelty to at-
tempt to remove it to a dispensary. In order to safe-
guard the owner's interests in the matter, the amend-
ment further provided that, if the owner is absent, or
if he refuses to consent to the destruction of the suf-
fering animal, the police officer must secure, before he
can proceed under the law, a certificate from one of
several veterinarians whom the Governor-in-Council
should appoint.

No small part of the necessity for a law such as this
would arise from the Indians' habit, already described,
of turning diseased and dying cows, and calves that he
is in process of starving to death, into the streets to
wander until they die what he calls "a natural death."
As their strength fails, they become less and less able
to guide their movements, and, in the end, are often
caught and crushed by some vehicle against whose
wheels they fall.

The debates evoked by the Bombay Government's
proposal of relief throw so much general light on
Indian modes of thought that their quotations at some
length may be justified. On the introduction of the
measure, a Hindu member, Mr. S. S. Dev, came at
once to his feet with: 5

4 Bill No. V of 1926, "A Bill Further to Amend the City of Bom-
bay Police Act, 1902."

5 Bombay Legislative Council Debates, Official Report, 1926, VoL
XVII, Part VII, pp. 579-8o.

[252]

THE QUALITY OF MERCY

The principle of the bill is revolting to an Indian mind.
... If you will not shoot a man in similar circumstances,
how can you shoot an animal, in the name of preventing
cruelty to animals? . . . Further, the bill, if it becomes law,
may in actual operation give rise to fracas in public streets.

Then follows Mr. Pahalajani, of Western Sind.
Says he: 6

This section makes no exception whatever whether the ani-
mal is a cow or a horse or a dog. The policeman with the cer-
tificate of the veterinary practitioner can destroy any animal.
The official [British] members of the Council ought to know
some of them have remained here for over 30 years that
no Hindu would allow a cow to be destroyed in whatsoever
condition it is. There are pnjra^oles 7 in which the worst dis-
eased animals are nursed and fed. . . . [This measure] pro-
ceeds on the assumption that animals have no soul, and they
deserve to be shot if they are not in a condition to live. The
Hindu idea of soul is quite different from that held by West-
erners. ... A measure of this kind would wound the reli-
gious susceptibilities of Hindus.

To this declaration Mr. Montgomerie, Secretary to
Government, responds, with a picture from the daily
life of the city: 8

I can hardly think that the honourable member means what
he says. Is it a decent sight to see some poor animal disem-
bowelled, legs broken and bleeding, in the streets of Bombay?
The only humane thing ... is to put the beast out of mis-

Ibid. t 580.

7 Animal asylums, later to be described.

8 Bombay Legislative Council Debates, p. 581.

[25.ll

MOTHER INDIA

cry. It is inhumanity to allow this animal to suffer and re*
move it with the probability that it may break to pieces while
being so moved.

But Hindu after Hindu decries the measure, and on
grounds of offended sentiment alone, save that one of
their number, Mr. Soman, takes thought that a ques-
tion of expense is involved. For the bill empowers
Government to appoint a few area veterinarians, to be
locally handy to the police. This charge upon public
funds, Mr. Soman feels, goes beyond any suffering ani-
mal's proper claim. As he puts it: 9

If any generous minded practitioners come forward to help
the police officers, so much +he better. But if any new posts
are to be created, which are to be maintained at public expense,
I would like certainly to oppose the bill.

And the debate, for the day, closes on the note of
fate. Says Rao Sahib D. P. Desai, member from
Kaira. 10

All the trouble arises from having two conflicting ideals of
mercy. The framers of the bill think that shooting an animal
which is diseased and which could not be cured is much better.
We on the other hand think that God himself has ordained
what is to come about.

On the resumption of the reading of the Hll, over
three months later, 11 the Honorable Mr. Hotson, Chief

* Bombay Legislative Council Debates, March 2, 1926, p. 583.
u/Mrf., p. 585.
11 July 26, 1926.

[254]

THE QUALITY OF MERCY

Secretary to Government, assumes the labor of trying
to win Indian support. He pleads: 12

The one object of this bill is to make it possible to deal with
injured animals which are lying in the street or in any other
public place in a state of suffering and pain, for which there
is no relief for them. It is open to the owners of such animals
to remove them, [or] to have them taken away by other chari-
table persons to a pnjrapole or to any other place where ani-
mals are received and cared for. It is only in cases where the
animal is neglected in its misery, where, as things are now, the
animal has to lie in the public streets of Bombay for many
hours, perhaps until death brings relief, that the power . . ,
will be exercised. That such an animal should be in such a
condition in a public place where there are many passers-by in
a great city like Bombay . . . causes pain to observers of all
classes and it is desirable not only that the animal should be
relieved . . . but that the feelings of the passers-by should
be saved from the extreme discomfort caused by such sights.
That is all that this bill seeks to attain.

But the Hindu position remains unshaken. The old
arguments 1S come forward until, presently, they arouse
the Honorable Ali Mahomed Khan Dehlavi, Muham-
madan, Minister of Agriculture in the Bombay Gov-
ernment. Says he, expressing himself as "rather anxious
in the interests of agriculturists": 14

It was argued at the last session that every animal having
a soul should not be destroyed. I have been tackled severely

Bombay Legislative Council Debates, Vol. XVIII, Part I, pp.
70-1.

18 Ibid., pp. 72-3.
.73.

[255]

MOTHER INDIA

in this House by honourable members on the opposite benches
for not taking sufficient precaution and for not spending suffi-
cient money to kill elephants, [wild] pigs and rats in the in-
terests of agriculturists. And if this is a question of killing a
Soul, I think an elephant has a bigger soul than a pig, and the
latter a bigger soul than a rat. If that principle were applied
to the agricultural department, I shall be asked to stop kill-
ing the animals I have mentioned. The result will be that the
agriculturists in the country will suffer very much. I say, Sir,
there is absolutely no difference at all between the case of an
animal in the streets of cities like Bombay, or in the jungles
or fields in the country outside.

The concern of the Minister of Agriculture for the
cultivators, his special charges, again uncovers the usual
attitude of the Indian politician toward that body of
humanity which constitutes over 72 per cent, of the
people of India. Says Rao Sahib D. P. Desai, frankly
tossing off their case: 15

The agriculturists should not be taken as the whole of
Indian society. . . . But even if the agriculturist thinks that
it is desirable that any animals that are dangerous to agricul-
ture should be destroyed, it should not be taken that the whole
Hindu society agrees with that view of the agriculturists, and
I think that no weight should be given such views in this
House.

Out of the remainder of the day's debate emerge
much sterile criticism and accusation of Government's
effort and no fresh thought excepting that of the old

15 Bombay Legislative Council Debates, p. 76.

[256]

THE QUALITY OF MERCY

Muhammadan member from the Central Division,
Moulvi Rafiuddin Ahmad, who counsels, Nestor-
wise: 1G

It is not the intention in the remotest degree of the Gov-
ernment to injure the susceptibilities of any classes of His
Majesty's subjects in India. . If [anything] can be done
by any other means than by the provisions of this bill, I think
Government will be only too pleased to adopt them, and as
far as I know and I have been in this house long enough
there has never been any question of sentiment which Gov-
ernment have not taken into consideration, and I do admire
them for that. ... In this House Hindus and Muhamma-
dans have joined to oppose Government if in any remote de-
gree they thought that Government were mistaken and on
many occasions Government have conceded. ... It is no
use coming here with empty heads, there must be some sug-
gestions offered, it is easy to criticise, but it is at the same time
our duty also to suggest better measures. I appeal to all those
persons that have raised objections. . . . Government is quite
open to reason.

"Are you authorized to speak on behalf of Govern-
ment?" a Hindu hotly interrupts.

"I am authorized to speak on behalf of every per-
son with whom this Council is concerned. I do say
this, this objection is altogether unreasonable," the
other returns.

But his appeal wins no response. On the contrary,
a Hindu member grimly suggests that if by chance a
Muhammadan were to be appointed veterinary and

w Ibid., pp. 77-8.

257.1

MOTHER INDIA

were to approve the killing of a sick cow, the peace of
the city as between Hindus and Muhammadans would
go up in smoke.

And the discussion ends by the referring of the bill
to a select committee of the House, composed of nine
Indians Hindu, Muhammadan, and Parsi, and of two
Britons,

In the second reading of this bill, 17 we find the Chief
Secretary of Government, Mr. Hotson, presenting the
select committee's report with the comment that the
committee "has gone so far in the desire to avoid giv-
ing offense to any of our brethren" that the usefulness
of the bill has been impaired a mild and diplomatic
phrasing of the emasculation that has taken place.

Cows and bulls are now excepted from the proposed
law, and temple precincts are put beyond its reach} any-
thing may happen there. Yet, without a single construc-
tive proposal of any sort, the Hindu opposition keeps
up. Members urge that legislation be delayed if not
abandoned, that Government are indiscreet in urging
any action; that <( the agonies of the animals" are not
so great that sympathy need pass the point of theory;
that, in any event, Hindu policemen should be exempt
from the duty of shooting animals, since to do so is
contrary to their religion; that to avoid invidious dis-
tinctions Muhammadan officers may likewise claim ex-
emption; that, because Indian officers bungle with fire-
arms, British police sergeants "whose marksmanshio is

17 August 5, 1926,

THE QUALITY OF MERCY

perfect" be charged with the duty. Says Mr. Surve,
Hindu member from Bombay City, advocating the kst
suggestion:

"To kill a disabled animal which is just about to die,
that kind of butchery we are incapable of ... that
is not our chivalry." 18

So failed, for this time at least, Government's at-
tempt to defend the cow from her worshipers. With
its intended chief beneficiary left out, the bill passed.
Yet, Government's argument, so patiently and cour-
teously pursued, did, as it continued, educe a certain
amount of Indian support. And in view of the fact that
the principle involved is a complete exotic in minds
committed to the expiatory journey of the soul, each
bit of ground so gained speaks of reward, however
distant.

It was in 1890 that the Governor-General-in-Council
passed the Act for the Prevention of Cruelty to Ani-
mals, of which Act the fifth section prohibited the kill-
ing of any animal in an unnecessarily cruel manner. In
1917 it was found necessary to clarify the intentions of
Section V, expressly directing it upon persons cruelly
killing a goat, or having in their possession the skin of
a goat so killed. Provincial Governments have enacted
the same laws. And yet the offense against which these
measures are aimed continues in the land.

It is the skinning of goats alive.

The skin stripped from a living goat can be stretched
18 Bombay Legislative Council Debates, August 5, 1926, p. 716.

[259]

MOTHER INDIA

a little larger, and therefore brings a little higher price,
than one removed after killing.

It will scarcely be necessary to amplify this point.
In the Province of Behar and Orissa in the year 1925,
thirty-four cases of the flaying alive of goats were
brought to court by the police. But light fines, meted
out by Indian judges whose sentiment is not shocked,
are soon worked off in the extra price fetched by the
next batch of flayed-alive skins. The risk of prosecu-
tion is small j and "there is every reason," concludes
the Provincial Police Administration report, "to sup-
pose that the number of reported cases is no criterion
of the prevalence of this outrage." Many skins so
stripped have been shipped to America.

Britain, by example and by teaching, has been work-
ing for nearly three-quarters of a century to implant
her own ideas of mercy on an alien soil. In this and in
uncounted other directions she might perhaps have
produced more visible results, in her areas of direct
contact, by the use of force. But her administrative
theory has been that small constructive value lies in the
use of force to bring about surface compliance where
the underlying principle is not yet grasped. And, given
a people still barbarian in their handling of their own
women, it is scarcely to be expected that they should
yet have taken on a mentality responsive to the appeal
of dumb creatures.

Unhappily for the helpless animal world, Preven-
tion of Cruelty to Animals is, under the current Indi-
anization movement, a "transferred subject" of Gov-

[260]

THE QUALITY OF MERCY

ernment. That is to say: in each province working the
"Reforms" the administration of this branch has been
transferred by the British Parliament into the hands
of an Indian minister. Dumb creation pays with its
body the costs of the experiment.

Chapter XX

IN THE HOUSE OF HER FRIENDS

"This country is the crudest in the world, to ani-
mals," said an old veterinarian, long practicing in
India. It would perhaps be fairer to repeat that the
people of India follow their religions, which, save
with the small sect called Jains, produce no mercy
either to man or to beast, in the sense that we of the
West know mercy.

Mr. Gandhi himself writes: l

In a country where the cow is an object of worship there
should be no cattle problems at all. But our cow-worship has
resolved itself into an ignorant fanaticism. The fact that we
have more cattle than we can support is a matter for urgent
treatment. I have already suggested the taking over of the
question by cow protection societies.

Cow Protection Societies maintain gaushalas, or cow
asylums. These asylums, like the pnjra^oles^ or asy-
lums for all animals, are maintained by gifts, and have
access, through rich Hindu merchants, to almost un-
limited funds. "Let Government of India promise to
stop the killing of cows in India and they can have all
the money they can use plus a war with the Muham-

1 Young India, Feb. 26, 1925.

[262]

IN THE HOUSE OF HER FRIENDS

madan," an experienced old Hindu official once told me.

A strong claim to the bounty of the gods is believed
to be established through saving the life of a cow. Yet
as a Hindu, you are not disturbed in conscience by sell-
ing your good cow to a butcher, because it is he, not
you, who will kill the cow. Then, taking the money he
gives you, you may buy of him, for a fraction of that
sum, the worst cow in his shambles, turn her over to
the gaushala to care for, and thereby acquire religious
merit, profiting your soul and your purse in one trans-
action.

Having personally visited a number of gaushalas
and $injra'poles y I cannot but wonder whether those
who support them so lavishly, those who commit ani-
mals to their care, and those who, like Mr. Gandhi, so
strongly advocate their maintenance and increase, ever
look inside their gates. I first heard of them through a
western animal lover long domiciled in India. He said:

"The Hindu who, as an act of piety, buys a cow of
the butcher and places her in the gaushala, always buys
a poor diseased animal because he gets her cheap. When
he places her in the gaushala he does not give money
with her, or, at best, not money enough for her decent
keep. And even if he did, the keeper would pocket
most of it. The suffering in these places is terrible. In
one of them I recently saw an old cow lying helpless,
being consumed by maggots which had begun at her
hind quarters. It would take them ten days to eat up
to her heart and kill her. Till then she must lie as she
lay.

MOTHER INDIA

" 'Can't you do something for her?' I asked the
keeper.

" 'Why?' he replied, honestly enough. 'Why should
I? What for?'"

My second informant was an American cattle spe-
cialist living in India, a highly-qualified practical man.
He said:

"I was asked to visit some of these gaushalas and
give advice. And because the political unrest since the
War has inclined many of these people to shut their
minds to the council of British officials, I hoped that,
as an American and an outsider, I could be of use. But
I found in every place that I visited either intentional
dishonesty or gross mismanagement. In all cases the
animals imprisoned there were the least of anybody's
concern. My advice was not welcome. When they
found I would not give them a rubber-stamp approval,
they had no use for me at all."

I next consulted a notable religious leader, the
Guru* of Dial Bagh. His words were:

"I have visited two of these places, both times taking
them by surprise. The sights that I saw there were so
horrible that for two days afterward I could not take
food."

Finally, I recorded the testimony of an Indian
trained in the western school of cattle-breeding and
dairying and now occupying a position of considerable
responsibility in that line. Describing the pnjrapole as
"a lane or square full of animal's pens," he went on*

* Religious master.

[264]

IN THE HOUSE OF HER FRIENDS

"Religions sentiment puts the creatures there, but
there it stops. They are much neglected and suffer tor-
ments through neglect. Rich merchants and bankers
subscribe annually tons of money for their care, but the
money all goes to graft and waste. The creatures in
most of the asylums are far worse off than they were
when they scavenged in the gutters for a living, with a
happy chance of getting killed by passing cars. They
are miserable, dying skeletons. The caretakers have no
knowledge of the care of animals and no previous
training or experience. The money spent in such big
sums is not spent on them! There are good animal
asylums in India, but they are few!"

The first gaushala that I saw for myself was in the
suburbs of a central Indian city. Over the entrance gate
was a charming painting of the blue god Krishna in the
forest, piping to white cows.

Inside the high walls at a distance lay a large pleas-
ant garden of fruit-trees and vegetable beds encircling
a pleasant bungalow the keeper's house. On the
hither side of the garden was the place of the cows.
This was a treeless, shrubless, shelterless yard of hard-
trodden, cracked, bare clay, which, in the rains, would
be a wallow of foul mud, inhabited by animals whose
bones, in some cases, were literally cutting through
their skins. Some lay gasping, too weak to stand. Some
had great open sores at which the birds, perched on
their hipbones or their staring ribs, picked and tore.
Some had broken legs that dangled and flopped as they

[265]

MOTHER INDIA

stirred. Many were diseased. All were obviously
starved.

Bulls as wretched as the cows stood among them,
and in a little pen at the side were packed some 250
small calves. From these last arose a pitiful outcry, at
the sound of approaching steps j and as I looked down
over the pen-wall at their great brown eyes, their hol-
low sides and their shaking legs, it occurred to me to
ask what they were fed. The answer, frankly given
by the gaushala attendant, was that each calf gets the
equivalent of one small tea-cupful of milk a day, until
it dies which as a rule, and happily, it shortly does
the rest of the milk being sold in the bazaar by the
keeper of the gaushala.

Asking next to see the daily ration of a cow, I was
shown the granary a bin measuring perhaps five by
three by two feet, containing small seeds heavily mixed
with husks. Of this each full-grown animal got one
half-pound daily. Nothing else whatever was fed, ex-
cepting a little dry chopped straw. Straw contains no
food values, but would serve for a time to keep the
creatures' two sides from touching. No paddock was
provided, and no grazing of any sort. The animals
merely stood or lay as I saw them until the relief of
death.

One cow had but three legs, the hind leg having
been amputated below the knee, '^because she kicked
when they milked her."

In other gaushalas I saw cripples who had been made
so in the process of creating monsters. For this purpose

[266!

IN THE HOUSE OF HER FRIENDS

they cut a leg from one calf and graft it anywhere on
the body of another, to exhibit the result for money as
a natural portent. The maimed calf, if it does not bleed
or starve or rot to death, may be bought for a song
and sent to a gaushala. No dissatisfaction seemed to be
felt as to this history.

In the heart of the city of Ahmedabad, within a few
miles of Mr. Gandhi's pleasant and comfortable home
in which he writes his earnest pleas for the support of
cow shelters and pnjrapoles, I visited a large $injra-
pole whose description, after what has already been
said, need not be inflicted upon the reader's sensibili-
ties. I hope that every animal that I saw in it is safely
dead.

But from such memories it is a pleasure to turn to
the one exception that my personal experience revealed,
an establishment maintained by "The Association for
Saving Milch Cattle from Going to the Bombay-
Slaughter House."

This society is composed practically entirely of rich
Indian merchants and merchants' associations. Its latest
report 3 affords some interesting reading. It begins with
a statement incorporating the estimate that, during the
five years from April i, 1919, to March 31, 1924,
229,257 cows were slaughtered in Bombay City, and
that 97,583 calves and young buffaloes were "tortured
to death in the stables."

The report proceeds with an appeal against all

Mw Appeal by Shree Ghatkopar Sarvajanika Jivadaya Khata, 75
Mahabir Building, Bombay.

[267]

MOTHER INDIA

slaughter, even of bullocks, sheep and goats, for which
the figures are also given. Then it concerns itself with
the question of the shortage of milk:

We Hindus claim to protect the cow. If this claim were
just, India should be a land flowing with milk. But as a
matter of fact this is not the case. Milk in cow-protecting
Bombay, for instance, is nearly as dear as in cow-killing Lon-
don or New York. Good milk cannot be had for love or
money and the direct consequence of this state of things is a
really terrible mortality among infants and a heavy death rate
among adults. . . .

The "dairy" plant that the Association itself main^
tains in the country on the outskirts of Bombay consists
of a decent set of cowsheds, substantially and prac-
tically built for shelter, air and sanitation, and reason-
ably clean. The superintendent said he was feeding fif-
teen pounds of hay, with eight pounds of grain and
oil cake, per head, daily. And the cattle, such as they
were, did not look hungry. The herd consisted of 277
head, whose aggregate milking came to about 130
quarts a day, which, sold to some 130 families, gave a
daily income of about $22.50 to the establishment.
Fresh cows were sold out of the plant on condition that
the purchaser should never sell them to be killed.

The staff, entirely Indian, impressed me as being
eager and interested as to their work. Said the chief:

"If this place were merely commercial there would
not be so many non-commercial cattle here. We have
to buy out of the slaughter house} but where once we

[268]

IN THE HOUSE OF HER FRIENDS

bought the poorest and cheapest, now we have learned
to buy the best. And besides, the idea of any sort of
commercial element, in a gauskala, is new to India.
Up to the present we have not put any private milk-
men out of business, or appreciably reduced the city's
slaughter. But we hope to do so, in the long run. On
my staff here I have two or three Bachelors of Agricul-
ture young men trained on the Government Breeding
and Dairy farms to understand cattle. And that you
will never find in any other gaushala or pnjra^pole in
all India. We, here, believe in scientific care."

Looked at from the point of view of an American
farmer, the whole thing was too primitive to discuss.
Looked at from the Indian background, it was a shin-
ing light, and one felt almost guilty in noticing that all
the staff were cousins, nephews, or close relatives of
the superintendent.

But, it was a British-trained Indian in Government
employ under the direction of a British chief, who res-
cued this gaushala from a bad start, devised the present
advanced scheme and pursuaded the Association to
adopt it.

Meantime, the Indian politicians, at home and
abroad, curse "the criminal negligence of the Govern-
ment," 4 beat the air with words, spurn agriculture and
the agriculturalist, and, when publicity dictates, send
small contributions to the other kind of gaushala.

4 Yowig India, May 13, 1926, p. 174.

[269]

Chapter XXI

HOME OF STARK WANT

One hears a great deal from the new Indian intelli-
gentsia about the glories of the "Golden Age" a
period in the shadowy past when the land smiled withs
health and plenty, wisdom, beauty and peace and when
all went well with India. This happy natural condition
was done to death, one is given to understand, by the
mephitic influence of the present Government.

The argument for the Golden Age is wont to take
typical forms, such as this:

"You admit that the Emperor Chandragupta lived?
And that he was the man who fought Seleucus, who
fought Alexander? Very well: In Chandragupta's day
a girl of fourteen, beautiful and loaded with jewels,
could walk abroad in perfect safety. And there was
perfect peace, no poverty, no famine, no plague. But
Britain ruined our Golden Age."

Or again, the accuser first paints a picture of an
idyllic land, distinguished by science, philosophy and
pastoral grace, then suddenly confronts his hearer with
the challenge: "Can you show me, in all India, any
remnant of that life? No? Exactly. Then, if it exists
nowhere, does it not follow that Britain must have de-
stroyed it?"

But the period of Chandragupta, whatever its qual-
[270]

HOME OF STARK WANT

ity, was removed from that of England's first acquisi-
tion of foothold in India by over nineteen hundred
years. 1 Chandragupta's dynasty having disappeared into
mists of legend out of which the one great figure of
Asoka dimly looms, the Scythians and the Turks rode
through the northern mountain passes, helped them-
selves to northern India and set up their kingdoms
there. And the native Hindu mass, as years rolled by,
merged its conquerors, both Scythian and Turk, into its
own body.

The fourth and fifth centuries, A.D., comprised the
great period of Hindu art and history the age of the
Gupta Kings. Then again the hand grew lax that held
the northern passes; and again down out of Central
Asia poured wave after wave of wild humanity, this
time the terrible nomad White Huns, brothers to the
forces of Attila. Ravenous for the wealth of the land,
they had watched the frontier for their hour. When it
struck, leaping through like a loosened torrent, they
swept the country bare of all that had been its social
fabric.

By the beginning of the sixth century the northern
half of the territory we call India had become one of
the provinces of the Huns. And the impact of succes-
sive Hun hordes, striking down through the mountain
barrier, had again so thoroughly wiped out the past
that no authentic family or clan tradition of today can
go behind that point.

The Huns, like the Scythians and the Turks before

1 Chandragupta reigned B.C. 322-298.

MOTHER INDIA

them, were gradually absorbed in the native stock.
Hinduism, for a time disputed by Buddhism, regained
possession of the land. Its disintegrating tenets and its
cumulative millions of terrifying gods did their work.
Henceforth, save during a few years in the seventh
century, no successful attempt was made, north or
south, to establish political unity or a permanent state,
while forces of disunion multiplied and grew strong.

The history of northern India from the middle of
the seventh century through the next five hundred
years is a tangled web of the warfare of little clans
and states, constantly changing in size and in number
with the changing fortunes of battle and intrigue.
Small chiefs march and countermarch, raid, seize,
annex, destroy, slay and are slain, each jealous of each,
each for himself alone, embroiling the entire northern
and central part of the country in their constant feuds.

Meantime, peninsular India remained always a place
apart, untouched by the currents of the north and de-
fended therefrom by the buttress of her hills and
jungles. Here lived the dark-skinned aboriginals,
Tamils, without infusion of Aryan blood, fighting their
own fights and worshiping the demons of their faith.
And when at last Hindu missionaries sallied south
along the coast, these recommended their creed, it
would seem, by the familiar process of adding the local
demons to the number of their own gods.

The Tamils had developed a rich native art} and in
one at least of their many and ever-changing little
kingdoms they had brought forth an elaborate and in*

[272]

HOME OF STARK. WANT

terestmg system of village government. By the end of
the twelfth century, however, this feature had utterly
perished, crushed out. And it is well to observe that,
north or south, a history made up of endless wars and
changes of dynasty developed no municipal institutions,
no free cities, no republics, no political consciousness
in the people. Each region lay forever prostrate, su-
pine, under the heel of a despot who in his brief hour
did as he pleased with his human herds until some
other despot pulled him down to destruction.

For a rapid survey of the next era in India's history
one cannot do better than turn to Sir T. W. Holder-
ness's Peoples and Problems of India: 2

The first comers were Arabs, who founded dynasties in
Sind and Multan as early as [A.D.] 800. . . . About [the
year] 1000 the terror came. By that time the Tartar races
had been brought into the fold of Islam, and the Turks, the
most capable of these races, had started on the career which
in the West ended in their establishment at Constantinople.
. . . In 997, Mahmud [a Turkish chieftain] descended upon
India. His title, "the Idol-breaker," describes the man. Year
by year he swept over the plains of India, capturing cities
and castles, throwing down idols and temples, slaughtering
the heathen and proclaiming the faith of Muhammad. Each
year he returned with vast spoils [to his home in Afghanistan].

For five hundred years, reckoning from A.D. IOOO, suc-
cessive hosts of fierce and greedy Turks, Afghans and Mon-
gols trod upon one another's heels and fought for mastery in
India. At the end of that time, Babar the Turk founded in

Williams & Norgate, London, 1920, pp. 48-50.

[273]

MOTHER INDIA

1526 the Mughal Empire; thenceforward for two hundred
years the passes into India were closed and in the keeping of
his capable successors.

Says Holderness on another page: *

The Mughal Empire . . . was of the ordinary type of
Asiatic despotisms. It was irresponsible personal government.
For India it meant the substitution of a new set of conquerors
for those already in occupation. But the new comers brought
with them the vigour of the north they came from the plains
of the Oxus beyond the Kabul hills and they drew an un-
limited supply of recruits from the finest fighting races of
Asia. In physical strength and hardihood they were like the
Norsemen and Normans of Europe.

To check the Islamic tide in its flood toward the
south, a Hindu power, known as the Empire of Vi-
jayanagar, sprang up among the Tamils. Its rulers
built a gorgeous city and lived in unbounded luxury.
But here, as elsewhere all over India, the common peo-
ple's misery provided the kings' and nobles' wealth,
and only their abject submission made possible the ex-
istence of the state. Yet the glories of the Hindu
stronghold soon eclipsed. In the year 1565 one blow
of Muslim arms, delivered by the sultans of small
surrounding states, slaughtered its people and reduced
the splendid city to a heap of carven stones.

Yet the earlier of the great Mughal Emperors tol-
erated the old religion. Their chief exponent, Akbar,
even married a native lady, and admitted Rajput chiefs

* Peoples and Problems of India, p. 53.

[274!

HOME OF STARK WANT

and Brahman scholars to place and posts. But the Mug-
hals administered always as conqueror strangers j and
though they made use of the talents or learning of in-
dividuals among the Hindus, they took care constantly
to strengthen the Muslim hand from their own trans-
montane source.

Then, in 1659, t ^e Emperor Aurangzeb again
brought to the Mughal throne an Islamism that would
not countenance the idolatry of the Hindu mass. His
heavy hand, destroying temples and images, broke the
Rajput's fealty and roused the Hindu low-caste peas-
antry of the Deccan the Mahrattas in common
wrath. So that when Aurangzeb, in his ambition for
more power, more wealth, attacked even the little Mu-
hammadan kings of the Deccan, the Mahrattas rose up
as guerilla bands, and, under cover of the general
embroilment, robbed, slew and destroyed on their own
account, wasting the land. A half-century of Aurang-
zeb's disjointing rule so weakened the Mughal Empire
that, at his death, it fell asunder, leaving the Mahratta
hordes, now trained in raids and killings under their
bandit chiefs, to play a brief role as the strong hand in
India.

Then again happened the historic inevitable, as hap-
pen it will whenever the guard of the north is down.
The Mughal Empire fallen, the door open to Central
Asia, Central Asia poured in. First came the Persian,
then the fierce Afghan, who, in a final battle delivered
in 1761, drove the Mahrattas with wholesale slaughter
back to their Deccan hills.

[275]

MOTHER INDIA

Now, in the scanty official records of all these trou-
bled centuries, little indeed is said o the common peo-
ple. The histories are histories of little kings and tribal
chiefs, their personal lives, ambitions, riches, intrigues,
fights and downfalls. Such glimpses as appear, how-
ever, show the populace generally as the unconsidered
victims of their master's greed, be that master Hindu
or Muhammadan. Hungry, naked, poverty-stricken,
constantly overridden by undisciplined mobs of sol-
diers, bled of their scanty produce, swept by exter-
minating famines and epidemics, our clearest knowledge
of them comes from the chronicles of strangers who
from time to time visited the country.

Many western travelers French, Dutch, Portu-
guese, Spanish have left records of the country, north
and south, as it was during and after Akbar's day. All
agree in the main points.

The poor, they say, were everywhere desperately
poor, the rich forever insecure in their riches. Between
common robbers and the levies of the throne, no man
dared count on the morrow. The Hindu peoples consti-
tuted the prostrate masses. The nobles and governing
officials, few in numbers, were almost all foreigners,
whether Turks or Persians. Their luxury and ostenta-
tion arose, on the one hand, from an insatiable hunger
for sensual pleasure, and, on the other, from the neces-
sity not to be outshone at court. All places and favors
were bought by costly bribes, and the extravagance of
life was increased by the fact that, in northern India

[276]

HOME OF STARK WANT

at least, whatever a rich man possessed at the time of
his death reverted to the royal treasury.

To acquire means to keep up their gorgeous state
the officials, from the pro-consuls down, had but one
method to squeeze the peasantry. They squeezed.

In Madras, wrote van Linschoten, who saw the coun-
try in the decade between 1580 to 1590, the peasants 4

... are so miserable that for a penny they would endure to
be whipped, and they eat so little that it seemeth they live by
the air 5 they are likewise most of them small and weak of
limbs.

When the rains failed, they fell into still deeper dis-
tress, wandered like wild animals in vain search of
food and sold their children for "less than a rupee
apiece," while the slave-market was abundantly re-
cruited from those who sold their own bodies to escape
starvation, of which cannibalism, an ordinary feature
of famine, was the alternative.

The Badshah Namah of 'Abd Al Hamid Lahawri
bears witness that in the Deccan during the famine of
1631, "pounded bones of the dead were mixed with
flour and sold. . . . Destitution at length reached such
a pitch that men began to devour each other and the
flesh of a son was preferred to his love. The number
of the dying caused obstruction in the roads." The
Dutch East India Company's representative, in the
same year, recorded that in Surat the dearth was so

4 The Voyage of John Huyghen van Linschoten to the East Indies,
edited for the Hakluyt Society, 1884.

[277]

MOTHER INDIA

great that "menschen en vee van honger sturven . . .
moeders tegen natuer haere klnderkens wt hongers-
noot op gegeten hebben." Two years later Christo-
pher Read reported to the British East India Company
that Mesulapatam and Armagon were "sorely op-
pressed with famine, the liveinge eating up the dead
and men durst scarcely travel in the country for f eare
they should be kild and eaten." And Peter Mundy
wrote from Gujerat during the same period that a the
famine it selfe swept away more than a million of the
Comon or poorer Sort. After which, the mortallitie
succeeding did as much more among rich and poore.
Weomen were scene to rost their Children. ... A
man or woman noe sooner dead but they were Cutt in
pieces to be eaten." These testimonies will be found,
and at greater length, in the text and Appendix of the
Hakluyt Society's edition of the Travels of Peter
Mundy. Other old chronicles corroborate them.

Slaves cost practically nothing to keep and were
therefore numerous in each noble's household, where
their little value insured their wretched state. The ele-
phants of the nobles wore trappings of silver and gold,
while "the people," says the contemporaneous observer,
de Laet, 5 "have not sufficient covering to keep warm
in winter."

Merchants, if prosperous, dared not live comfort-
ably, dared not eat good food, and buried their silver
deep under ground j for the smallest show of means

*De Imperio Magni Mogolis, J. de Laet, Leyden, 1631.

HOME OF STARK WANT

brought the torturers to wring from them the hiding-
place of their wealth.

The village masses constituted practically the only
productive element in the land. All their production,
save their bare subsistence, was absorbed by the State.
As to its redistribution, that took a single route, into
the pockets of the extremely small body of foreigners
constituting the ruling class. None of it returned to
the people. No communal benefits existed.

A very few bridges and such roads as are made by
the plodding of bullocks' feet through dust and mud
comprised the communication lines of the land. No
system of popular education or of medical relief wa?
worked, and none of legal defense. Fine schemes were
sometimes set on paper by rulers and their ministers,
but practically nothing was actually done toward the
economic development of the country j for if any one
ruler began a work, his successor destroyed it or let it
decay. 8

Fifteen years after the death of Akbar, or in the
year 1620, the Hollander, Francisco Pelsaert, began
that seven years' residence in India of which he left so
valuable and so curious a record. In the course of his
narrative Pelsaert writes: 7

The land would give a plentiful, or even an extraordinary

6 India at the Death of Akbar, by W. H. Moreland, Macmillan &
Co., London, 1920, gives an elaborate and heavily documented digest
of contemporaneous authority on this general subject.

7 The Retnonstrantie of Francisco Pelsaert, translated from the
Dutch by W. H. Moreland and P. Geyl Heffers. Cambridge, 1925, pp.
47-5*

[279]

MOTHER INDIA

yield, if the peasants were not so cruelly and pitilessly op-
pressed; for villages which, owing to some small shortage of
produce, are unable to pay the full amount of the revenue-
farm, are made prize, so to speak, by their masters or gov-
ernors, and wives and children sold, on pretext of a charge of
rebellion. Some peasants abscond to escape their tyranny . . .
and consequently the fields lie empty and unsown and grow
into wildernesses.

... As regards the laws, they are scarcely observed at all,
for the administration is absolutely autocratic. . . Their
laws contain such provisions as hand for hand, eye for eye,
tooth for tooth; but who will ex-communicate the Pope? And
who would dare to ask a Governor "Why do you rule us this
way or that? Our Law orders thus." ... In every city
there is a ... royal court of Justice . . . [but] one must
indeed be sorry for the man who has to come to judgment
before these godless "un-judges"; their eyes are bleared with
greed, their mouths gape like wolves for covetousness, and
their bellies hunger for the bread of the poor; every one stands
with hands open to receive, for no mercy or compassion can
be had except on payment of cash. This fault should not be
attributed to judges or officers alone, for the evil is a uni-
versal plague; from the least to the greatest, right up to the
King himself, every one is infected with insatiable greed.

... It is important to recognise that [the King, Jahangir]
is to be regarded as king of the plains or the open roads only;
for in many places you can travel only with a strong body
of men, or on payment of heavy tolls to rebels . . . [and]
there are nearly as many rebels as subjects. Taking the chief
cities, for example, at Surat the forces of Raja Piepel come
pillaging up to, or inside the city, murdering the people and
burning the villages, and in the same way, near Ahmedabad,

[280]

HOME OF STARK WANT

Burhanpur, Agra, Delhi, Lahore, and many other cities,
thieves and robbers come in force by night or day like open
enemies. The Governors are usually bribed by the thieves to
remain inactive, for avarice dominates manly honour, and,
instead of maintaining troops, they fill and adorn their
mahals with beautiful women, and seem to have the pleasure-
house of the whole world within their walls.

The observant Dutchman 8 repeatedly dwells on the
disastrous contrast between

the manner of life of the rich in their great superfluity and
absolute power, and the utter subjection and poverty of the
common people poverty so great and miserable that the life
of the people can be depicted . . . only as the home of stark
want and the dwelling-place of bitter woe.

Nevertheless, he says, having discovered the numb-
ing influence of the doctrines of fate and caste: 9

The people endure patiently, professing that they do not
deserve anything better; and scarcely any one will make an
effort, for a ladder by which to climb higher is hard to find,
because a workman's children can follow no occupation other
than that of their father, nor can they inter-marry with other
castes. . . . For the workman there are two scourges, the
first of which is low wages. . , . The second is [the oppres-
sion by] the Governor, the nobles, the Diwan . . . and other
royal officers. If any of these wants a workman, the man is
not asked if he is willing to come, but is seized in the house
or in the street, well beaten if he should dare to raise any

8 The Remonstrantie of Francisco Felsaert, p. 6a
Ibid.

[28l]

MOTHER INDIA

objection, and in the evening paid half his wages or nothing
at all.

Forty years after Pelsaert's departure from India
came a French traveler, Francois Bernier. His stay cov-
ered the period from 1656 to 1668. His chronicle per-
fectly agrees with that of other foreign visitors, and
gives a vivid picture of men, women and things as he
found them in the reigns of Shahjahan and Aurangzeb
the climax of the Mughal Empire. Speaking on the
subject of land-tenure and taxation, this observer
writes: 10

The King, as proprietor of the land, makes over a certain
quantity to military men, as an equivalent for their pay. . . .
Similar grants are made to governors, in lieu of their salary,
and also for the support of their troops, on condition that
they pay a certain sum annually to the King. . . . The lands
not so granted are retained by the King as the peculiar do-
mains of his house . . . and upon these domains he keeps
contractors, who are also bound to pay him an annual rent.

Bengal, he thinks probably "the finest and most
fruitful country in the world." But of the other re-
gions he writes: u

As the ground is seldom tilled otherwise than by com-
pulsion, and as no person is found willing and able to repair
the ditches and canals for the conveyance of water, it hap-
pens that the whole country is badly cultivated, and a great

** Travels in the Mogul Empire, Francois Bernier, Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1916, p. 224.
11 Ibid., pp. 226-7, 230.

[282]

HOME OF STARK. WANT

part rendered unproductive from the want of irrigation. . .
The peasant cannot avoid asking himself this question: "Why
should I toil for a tyrant who may come tomorrow and lay
his rapacious hands upon all I possess and value?" . . . The
Governors and revenue contractors, on their part reason in this
manner: "Why should the neglected state of this land create
uneasiness in our minds? and why should we expend our own
money and time to render it fruitful? We may be deprived
of it in a single moment and our exertion would benefit
neither ourselves nor our children. Let us draw from the soil
all the money we can, though the peasant should starve or
abscond, and we should leave it, when commanded to quit, a
dreary wilderness." ... It is owing to this miserable system
of government . . , that there is no city or town which, if
it be not already ruined and deserted, does not bear evident
marks of approaching decay.

The country is ruined by the necessity of defraying the
enormous charges required to maintain the splendour of a
numerous court, and to pay a large army maintained for the
purpose of keeping the people in subjection.

Now, to touch as briefly as possible on the history of
European powers in India: At the time of Akbar's ac-
cession 1556 the Portuguese were already rooted
and fortified on the western coast of the Peninsula, at
Goa, which, with its environing territory, they had
taken from the Muhammadan kinglets of the Deccan.
Thence they controlled the merchant traffic of the
Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf. No other European
power had yet secured a base in the land, and no Eng-
lishman had yet set foot on the soil of India. "

12 Oxford History of India, p. 348.

[283]

MOTHER INDIA

The Portuguese hand in India soon weakened, on
lines of debauchery and cruelty. Thus came the decay
that, in the early sixteen hundreds, let fall all the Por-
tuguese settlements, save only Goa itself, into the
hands of the Dutch.

Dutch and English merchants, at that period, were
equally keen for the trade of the East. The Dutch-
men's main interest, however, lying with Java and the
Spice Islands, their English rivals soon stood in India
practically alone.

British merchant adventurers, by charter and con-
cessions granted by Queen Elizabeth and by the Mug-
hal Emperor, now from time to time established trad-
ing stations along the West coast. Their post in the Bay
of Bengal antedated by five years the settlement of
Boston by the Puritans. Nine years later the first Eng-
lish proprietary holding in India was secured, by agree-
ment between the local Hindu ruler and the "Gov-
ernor and Company of Merchants of London, Trading
with the East Indies." By this treaty the latter were
allowed to rent and fortify as a trading post a bit of
rough shoreland now the site of the city of Madras.
Here, presently, was to come Elihu Yale, once of Bos-
ton in Massachusetts, as Governor in the Company's
behalf. Here was earned the means to benefit the Con-
necticut University that bears his name today. And
here, in the old house where British Governors of
Madras still dwell, hangs Elihu Yale's portrait, look-
ing placidly out upon the scene of his labors.

French merchants, they also desirous of the trade of

[284]

HOME OF STARK WANT

India, during the latter half of the seventeenth cen-
tury secured several small points d'appui along the
southern coasts. Their commerce never equaled that
of the English; but their aspirations and the national
clashes in Europe alike led them into a series of anti-
English intrigues with small Indian rulers, resulting
in hostilities of varying result. So that while the Eng-
lish colonists of New England and New York, with the
aid of Indian allies, were fighting "French and Indian
Wars" for control of the future, English colonists on
the other side of the world, with the aid of Indian
allies, were fighting French and Indian wars for the
same purpose. And with a comparable outcome. 13

The struggle which began, openly, in 1746, when
the French took Madras, came to its close in 1761,
when the French unconditionally surrendered Pondi-
cherry, their own headquarters, thus ending their ef-
fective career in India.

Until well into the eighteenth century, English
holdings in India were limited to a few square miles
in Madras, in the Island of Bombay, and at three or
four other points 5 during this period the English rep-
resentatives in India occupied themselves with trade
alone, taking no hand in local wars or politics. But with
the death of the Emperor Aurangzeb, the collapse of
the Mughal Empire, and the chaos of freebooting

13 As Americans we may here draw our critics' shot by admitting
that while we have done much to exterminate our Indians and only in
1924 granted them citizenship though retaining- guardianship over
them (United States v. Nice, 241 U. S. 598, 1916), our British cousins
have multiplied theirs, and have led them into a large and increasing
measure of self-government.

[285]

MOTHER INDIA

wars that then broke over the land, the Company set
up for the protection of its settlements a force of Eu-
ropean troops, supplemented by Indian auxiliaries.

Thenceforward it grew toward the status of a gov-
erning corporation. In 1784 the British Government,
by Act of Parliament, assumed a degree of control over
the Company's procedure. With such authority behind
it, the Company could enlarge its activities and pro-
ceed toward establishing peace in a country teeming
with anarchy.

This meant reducing to order a host of robber gangs,
of marauding chieftains, of captains of the old Mughal
regime now out of a job and swarming like migrating
bees looking for new kingdoms and new plunder. It
also meant dissuading small reigning princes from their
hereditary vocation of enlisting gangs of mercenaries
and campaigning against their neighbors. And if these
movements, which the princes themselves often re-
quested, usually resulted in annexing more territory
to the sphere of British influence or control, they also
brought an increasing semblance of unity to the country.

Once the work of pacification was well in hand, began
the attempt to build up civil institutions and public
privileges and to introduce law, justice and order, a
thousand years and more unknown in the land. The
Company was still a trading company, with a trader's
chief preoccupation. But it accepted the responsibility
for the people's welfare implied in the authority it
now held.

A human enterprise covering two centuries of hu-
[286]

HOME OF STARK. WANT

man progress, the name of the East India Company
was sometimes dimmed by mistaken judgment or by
unfit agents. Some of these were overbearing, some
tactless, some wavering, one or two were base and a
few succumbed to the temptation to graft. Of their de-
fects, however, not a little nonsense is spun.

The Company, on the whole, was honored in the
quality of its officers. As time passed, a more sensitive
public conscience at home made it increasingly alive to
critical observation. Its affairs were reviewed by Par-
liament. And, with the general rise in world-standards,
rose its standards of administration. Its inclusive
achievement was courageous, arduous and essential to-
wards the redemption of the country. Whatever its
faults, it cleared and broke the ground for progress.
And it lighted the first ray of hope that had ever
dawned for the wretched masses of the Indian peoples.

The abolition of ancient indigenous horrors, such as
the flourishing trade of the professional strangler
tribes, the Thugs; the burning alive of widows j the
burying alive of lepers, lie to the credit of the Com-
pany. And no briefest summary of the epoch-making
elements of its concerns could be forgiven a failure to
cite the gist of Section 87 of the Parliamentary Act of
1784, which reads:

No native of the said territories, nor any natural-born sub-
ject of His Majesty resident therein, shall, by reason only of
his religion, place of birth, descent, colour, or any of them,
be disabled from holding any place, office or employment
under the Company.

[287]

MOTHER INDIA

A bomb, indeed, to drop into caste-fettered, feud-
filled, tyrant-crushed India! Nor was this shock of free
western ideas without its definitely unsettling influence.
The Sikh Rebellion in 1845, the Indian Mutiny in
1857, were in no small degree direct fruits of that in-
fluence. And with the conclusion of the latter England
felt that the time had come to do away with the awk-
ward Company-Parliament form of government, to
end the control of a great territory by commercial in-
terest, however safeguarded, and to bring the admin-
istration of India directly under the Crown.

In the year 1858 this step was taken. Shabby, thread-
bare, sick and poor, old Mother India stood at last on
the brink of another world and turned blind eyes to-
ward the strange new flag above her head. It carried
then, as it carries today, a pledge that is, to her, in-
credible. How can she, the victim and slave of all re-
corded time, either hope or believe that her latest
master brings her the gift of constructive service, de-
mocracy and the weal of the common people?

[288]

Chapter XXII

THE REFORMS

The roots of the form of government now gradually
working out in British India ramify into past centuries
and are visible through continuous growth. For the
purpose of this book they may be passed over, to reach
the briefest outline of the present evolutionary phase.

The supreme power over India, today, is the people
of Great Britain represented by the British Crown and
Parliament, acting through the Secretary of State in
Council of India, sitting in India Office, in London.
The supreme government in India is that of the Gov-
ernor-General-in-Council, commonly called the Gov-
ernment of India. The Governor-General, or Viceroy,
is appointed by the Crown. His Council, similarly ap-
pointed, consists of seven Departmental heads the
Commander-in-Chief of the Forces, the Home Mem-
ber, the Finance Member, the Member for Railways
and Commerce, and the Members for Education,
Health and Lands, for Industries and Labor, and for
Law. Of this cabinet of seven members the three last
named are Indians.

Next in the structure of the Central Government
comes the "Indian Legislature," with its Upper Cham-
ber or "Council of State," and its Lower Chamber or,
"Legislative Assembly."

[289]

MOTHER INDIA

The Council of State comprises sixty members, of
whom thirty-four are elected, while twenty-six, of
whom not over twenty may be government officials,
are nominated by the Viceroy.

The Legislative Assembly consists of one hundred
and forty-four members, of whom one hundred and
three are elected. Of the remaining forty-one, all
nominated by the Viceroy, twenty-six must be members
of Government, while the rest are named to represent
the minor interests in the country, as, the Christian
Indian population, etc. Both chambers are heavily In-
dian, and both are constituted with a view to due rep-
resentation of the several provinces into which, for
purposes of administration, the country is divided.

British India is thus divided into fifteen provinces,
each with its separate administration. Of the nine
major divisions Madras, Bengal, and Bombay Presi-
dencies, the United Provinces, the Punjab, Behar and
Orissa, the Central Provinces, Burma, and Assam
each is controlled by a Governor with his Executive
Council. These act in conjunction with a Provincial
Legislative Council, a legislature of which 70 per cent,
(in Burma, 60 per cent.) at least must be elected by
the people.

The electorate is intended to give fairly balanced
separate representation to the various races, communi-
ties and special interests. The scale varies from prov-
ince to province, with varying local conditions. In
Madras , for example, it stands as follows:

[290]

THE REFORMS

Number of Men**

Class of Constituency hers Returned
Non-Muhammadans (meaning Hindus,

Jains, Buddhists, etc.) 65

Muhammadans 13

Indian Christian 5

Europeans (including British) I

Anglo-Indian I

Landholders [zemindars] 6

University I

Commerce Industry 6

The qualifications for voters also varies in the sev-
eral provinces. In general, however, the franchise rests
on a minimum property qualification. The law, thus
far, has given the vote to some seven-and-a-half mil-
lion persons * and has conferred upon all the major
provinces the right to enfranchise their women. 2

The effort to decentralize to magnify the respon-
sibilities of provincial governments for the purpose of
training and stimulating Indians to handle their own
affairs, stands out preeminent in the present scheme.
In part and as applied to the nine major divisions, this
makes of the provincial government a two-branched
machine operated from the office of the Governor. The
Governor and his Executive Council, all Crown ap-
pointees, form one branch. Council membership is com-
monly divided between British and Indians. The Gov-
ernor and his Ministers of Departments form the

1 The India Office, Sir Malcolm C. C. Seton, Putnam, London,
1926, p. 59- f . T

2 See Appendix II.

MOTHER INDIA

second branch. These are appointed by the Governor
from the elected members of the legislature and are
themselves responsible to that body. All ministers are
Indian. Between the two branches the various functions
of government formerly handled by a single arm are
now divided, under the heads of "reserved" and
"transferred" subjects.

Reserved subjects, save for the ultimate power of
the Central Government, lie in the hands of the Pro-
vincial Governor in Council. Transferred subjects are
assigned to the provincial legislatures, and are operated
by the Ministers.

The list of transferred subjects represents authority
resigned by the British people in favor of the peoples
of India. The intention of the plan is, if the experi-
ment succeeds, to enlarge the list of subjects trans-
ferred. On the other hand, where the Ministerial ma-
chine fails to work, Governors-in-Council may resume
control of a subject already transferred. Transferred
subjects at present comprise Education, Public Health,
Management of Public Works other than irrigation
and railways, Development of Industries, Excise, Ag-
riculture, Local Self-government and others. Reserved
subjects include Maintenance of Law and Order, De-
fense of India, Finance, the Land Revenue system, etc.

Of the provincial legislatures, known as Legislative
Councils, a recent authority 3 says:

The Councils have very wide powers of legislation and the
annual provincial budgets are submitted to them. In Trans-
The India Office, pp. 59-60.

[292]

THE REFORMS

ferred subjects they possess the power of the purse, but the
Governor may restore grants for purposes of the Reserved
side of the administration if he considers it essential to the
discharge of his responsibility that money refused by the
Council should be provided. He can disallow an Act or re-
serve it for the Governor-General's consideration, and has
the exceptional right to enact on his own authority a measure
(provided that it deals with a Reserved subject only) the pas-
sage of which he certifies to be essential to the discharge of
his responsibility. This special power has hitherto been exer-
cised only once.

Turning from provincial legislatures to that of the
Central Government, the same authority summarizes: *

The Indian legislature, subject to the preservation of the
powers of Parliament, has power to make laws "for all per-
sons, for all courts, and for all places and things, within
British India," for British officials and subjects in Indian
States, for "native Indian subjects of His Majesty" beyond
British India, and for officers, soldiers and followers of the
Indian Army wherever serving. But it requires the sanction
of the Governor-General for the introduction of measures
affecting the public debt or revenues, religion, military dis-
cipline, foreign relations, or fcr measures treating on mat-
ters relegated to provincial governments. . . .

The power of the purse has been very largely entrusted to
the Legislative Assembly. . . . The annual budget is laid
before both Chambers, and the consent of the Legislative As-
sembly is sought for the grants required on most matters,
though certain heads of expenditure are classed as "non-
votable."

*Ibid., pp. 60-2,

MOTHER INDIA

The Viceroy and the Crown hold the power of vetoj
and the former may enact a bill into law, subject to
disallowance by the Crown, without the consent of
either Chamber. An emergency measure, such a step
would be taken only in extreme cases.

It will scarcely be necessary, in this place, to go fur-
ther into the machinery of the present government of
British India.

Commonly known as "Dyarchy," or "The Re-
forms," it is in essence no new thing, but merely an
accelerated unfolding of the original British theme
whose motif is the drawing of Indians into respon-
sible participation in Government. India's outburst of
loyalty in the World War, her whole-hearted contri-
bution of men and means from every province and
state save Bengal, prompted a responsive flood of
feeling in Britain and a desire to requite one demon-
stration of confidence and sympathy with another in
kind. But Parliament was, in reality, only re-phrasing
the original principle embodied in the Proclamation
of Queen Victoria in 1858, was only pursuing the line
of the Indian Councils Act of 1909, when, in the Pre-
amble of the Act of 1919, the Act now functioning, it
declared its policy 5

... to provide for the increasing association of Indians in
every branch of Indian Administration, and for the gradual
development of self-governing institutions, with a view to the
progressive realisation of responsible government in British
India as an integral part of the empire.
5 Cf. pp. 193-4 and 287, ante.

[294]

THE REFORMS

The scheme in its shape of today has not the stability
of the slow-growing oak, root for branch, balanced
and anchored. Rather, it is a hothouse exotic, weedy,
a stranger in its soil, forced forward beyond its in-
herent strength by the heat of a generous and hasty
emotion. An outsider sitting today through sessions of
Indian legislatures, Central or Provincial, somehow
comes to feel like one observing a roomful of small
and rather mischievous children who by accident have
got hold of a magnificent watch. They fight and
scramble to thrust their fingers into it, to pull off a
wheel or two, to play with the mainspring j to pick
out the jewels. They have no apparent understanding
of the worth of the mechanism, still less of the value
of time. And when the teacher tries to explain to them
how to wind their toy up, they shriek and grimace in
fretful impatience and stuff their butterscotch into the
works.

As to the relation of these people to their supposed
job, its most conspicuous quality, today, is its artifi-
ciality. Adepts in the phraseology of democratic rep-
resentation, they are, in fact, profoundly innocent of
the thought behind the phrase. Despotisms induce no
growth of civic spirit, and the peoples of India, up to
the coming of Britain, had known no rule but that of
despots. Britain, by her educational effort, has gradu-
ally raised up an element before unknown in India
a middle class. But this middle class these lawyers
and professional men are in the main as much domi-
nated today as were their ancestors five hundred years

[295]

MOTHER INDIA

ago by the law of caste and of transmigration com-
pletest denial of democracy. They talk of "the people"
simply because the word bulks large in the vocabulary
of that western-born representative government which
they now essay.

A village headman knows and feels infinitely more
than do these elected "representatives" as to the duties
and responsibilities of government. An Indian prince
has the inherited habit of ruling, and, whatever his
failings, whatever his purpose, keeps his people some-
where in mind. And an American unconscious of his
own civic debt to his spiritual or blood-lineal ancestors,
from Plymouth Rock to Runnymede, may be brought
to a wholesome state of humility by a few days' watch-
ing of the anchorless legislators of India.

Off and on, during the winter session of 1926, in
Delhi, I listened to Assembly debates. Hour after
hour, day after day, the Swarajist bench spent their
energies in sterile, obstructionist tactics, while for the
most part the rest of the House sat apathetic save for
an occasional expression of weary contempt from some
plain fighting man out of the north. Little or nothing
constructive emanated from party benches. The sim-
plest piece of essential legislation proposed by Govern-
ment evoked from the Swarajist orators fantastic inter-
pretations as to sinister intent. The gravest concerns
elicited from them only a bedlam of frivolous and
abusive chatter. "We do not trust you," they would
repeat in effect} "we know your motives are bad." "We
believe nothing good of your thrice-damned alien gov-

[296]

THE REFORMS

eminent." And, coming down to specific arraignments,
they could solemnly produce such theories as that the
Supreme Court of the United States obeys, in its deci-
sions, the will of the British Crown. 6

Patient, unruffled, always courteous, the Government
members answered back. Not once was there a sign of
irritation or annoyance or fatigue, much less of despair
of the situation thrust upon them.

One day I took up this subject with one of the most
notable members of the Assembly, an Indian of supe-
rior abilities, whose dislike of Britain is probably as sin-
cere as that of any of those who attack her on this floor.

"Your felJow-legislators of the opposition make ter-
rible accusations against the good faith of Govern-
ment," I said. "They impugn its honesty ; they accuse
it of trying to set Hindus and Muhammadans by the
ears, on the principle of ^divide and rule'} they allege
that it tramples Indian interests under foot, that it
treats Indians themselves with disrespect, and that it
sucks or cripples the resources of the country for its
own selfish interests."

"Yes," he replied, "they say all that, and more."

"Do they mean it?" I asked.

"How could they?" he replied. "Not a man in the
House believes anything of the sort."

To an American having America's Philippine expe-
rience fresh in mind, this repetition of history was in-
finitely saddening. One remembered the words of the
King-Emperor's Message to the Indian Legislature

6 Legislative Assembly Debates, Vol. VII, p. 278.

[297]

MOTHER INDIA

and Councils at the opening of the first Sessions held
under the Reforms Act:

On you, the first representatives of the people on the new
Councils, there rests a very special responsibility. For on you
it lies, by the conduct of your business and the justice of your
judgment to convince the world of the wisdom of this great
constitutional change. But on you it also lies to remember the
many millions of your fellow-countrymen who are not yet
qualified for a share in political life, to work for their uplift-
ment and to cherish their interests as your own.

What meaning had such language in the ears of
those to whom it was addressed? What relation did
they feel, between themselves and poor old Mother
India? What duty toward their own cause, to exhibit
capacity and thereby to command further concessions?

The history of British administration of India
shows that reactionary disorders follow attempts at
speeded progress. The East resents being hustled, even
in reforms. It was perhaps specially unfortunate for
"Dyarchy" that its birthday should fall in the season
of Mr. Gandhi's ill-starred adventure into politics,
when he could turn upon it the full fire of his non-
cooperative guns. His influence in Bengal and the
Central Provinces was enough at the time to stop the
experiment completely, and although that influence
has now everywhere lapsed into negligibility as a po-
litical factor, its crippling and embittering after-effects
still drag upon the wheels of progress.

Without presuming to offer a criticism of the Re-

[298]

THE REFORMS

forms Act, it would seem that its chief obstacle lies
deeper in the roots of things than any enmity can
reach. The whole structure of the Reforms is planned
to rest on the foundation of a general electorate which,
through its directly elected legislators, controls in each
province the Ministers who handle the people's affairs.
And the difficulty is that while the structure hangs
waiting in midair, the foundation designed to sustain
it yet lingers in the blue-print stage does not in fact
exist. India has no electorate, in any workable sense of
the word, nor can have on the present basis for many
generations to come. And of this statement the natural
complement is also true: India's elected representatives
are as yet profoundly unaware of the nature of the
duties incumbent upon their office.

Reasons for the non-existence of an electorate will
have been gathered in the foregoing pages of this
book. One of the chief among them is, that while less
than 8 per cent, of the peoples can read at all, that lit-
erate fraction is concentrated almost entirely in the
large towns and cities, leaving the great masses spread
over the great spaces of the land, unreached and un-
reachable by the printed word.

This illiterate peasantry, these illiterate landholders,
have no access to and no interest in the political game,
nor in any horizon beyond that which daily meets their
physical eyes. The town politician, the legislator actual
or aspirant, rarely comes near them unless it be at
election time or, as in the period of the "non-violence"
agitations, to stir them with some report of evil to rise

[299]

MOTHER INDIA

in blind revolt When, recently, Swarajist members of
the legislative councils decided to try to block the
wheels of government by walking out, not one of
them, as far as I was able to learn, took the previous
step of consulting his constituents. The constituency is
as yet too gauzy a figment, too abstract a theory, too
non-oriental a conception, to figure as an influence in
their minds.

No one who has studied the course of events in the
Central and Provincial governments during the last six
years can escape the conclusion that the British gov-
ernment officials charged with administering the new
law have striven with honesty, sincerity and devotion,
to make it a success. They work against great difficul-
ties, straining their faith and power and patience to
bridge wide voids of experience and development.
Their success sometimes seems dim and slight. But one
of the finest executives of them all used, in my hear-
ing, these words:

"I would ask only this: 'Leave us alone. Don't
always be resurveying, reinvestigating, pulling up the
plant to look at its root. Each year that we get through
is a gain, one year more of peace for the people, of
public works protected and advanced, of justice given.
The longer we can go on, now, without any great
storm, the better the chance of Councils and Ministers
discovering that when we oppose them it is in obedi-
ence to our conception of a law higher than that of
personal ambition or clan advantage.* "

In the last clause of the paragraph just quoted lies
[300]

THE REFORMS

half hidden one of the greatest stumbling-blocks in the
way to sympathy and just judgment between India and
the West. To us it seems radically obvious that per-
sonal advantage and nepotism, as motives of the acts
of public officials, can but mean, the world over, shame
and disgrace. Therefore the suggestion that Indians
find difficulty in sharing that view carries, to our ears,
the taint of moral snobbery} and so we search our
own minds for other explanations of certain phe-
nomena that follow India's autonomization of Gov-
ernment.

But we should be fairer to the Indian as well as
wiser ourselves if we looked in his mind, rather than
in ours, for light on causes. Then we should see that
no white man in office ever labors under such a handi-
cap as does the average Indian official, or ever is so
largely foredoomed to defeat, in effort toward disin-
terested public service.

With the Hindu comes, first, the ancient religious
law of the family-clan; because of this system the
public office-holder who fails to feather the nest of his
kin will be branded by all his world not only a fool
but a renegade, and will find neither peace at home
nor honor abroad. No public opinion sustains him.

Second, beyond the family line comes the circle of
caste. The Hindu office-holder who should forget his
caste's interests for interests lying outside that circle
would bring down upon his head the opprobrium, per-
haps the discipline, of his orthodox fellow caste men.
And this, be it remembered, means not only temporal

MOTHER INDIA

discomfort, but also dire penalties inflicted upon his
soul, determining the miseries of future incarnations.

Third, the political struggle between Hindu and
Muslim, as will be seen in later chapters, brings tre-
mendous pressure to bear upon the official from either
camp, practically compelling him to dispense such pat-
ronage as he enjoys among his co-religionists only.

With these points in mind, one views with more
charity and understanding the breakdown of allegiance
to western ideals that generally occurs in even the
staunchest of Indian public officials when the British
superior officer who has backed him through thick and
thin in free work for general good, is replaced by an
Indian, himself subject to the ancient code.

It is stiff work to maintain, alone and accursed, an
alien standard among one's own people.

Yet with all its increased expense and diminished
efficiency, the new constitution is, somehow, turning
the wheels. Taking the shorter view, it has improved
the position of Indians in the services. It has opened
to them the height of office along many lines. It has
made Government more directly responsive to the sen-
timent of vocal India, to such an extent indeed that
the onlooker is tempted to wonder whether Govern-
ment's sense of proportion is not impaired, whether it
has not been nervously stifling its conscience to save
its ears, whether it is not paying more attention to the
spoiled baby's shrieks for the matches than it is to the
vital concerns of its whole big, dumb, helpless and in-
finitely needy family.

[302]

THE REFORMS

A "hard-headed American" long resident in India,
himself a person of excellent standing, told me this
incident:

One of the principal Swaraj politicians had just de-
livered himself of a ferocious public diatribe against
the Viceroy.

"Now tell me, Pundit," said the American, pri-
vately, "how can you shout like that in view of the
fact that only a few weeks ago this very Vicero} went
far out of his way to be courteous and accommodating
to you and to get you what you wanted?"

"How can I shout like that?" laughed the Indian.
"Why shouldn't I shout? Of course I shout, when
every time I shout he gives me something."

Thus in taking information from the Indian, at
home or abroad, a vital preliminary step is to appre-
ciate and keep always in mind the definition and value
that he assigns to "truth."

The Indian may be a devoted "seeker after truth"
in the sense of metaphysical speculation; he may be of
a splendid candor in dealing with most parts of most
subjects of which you speak together. And yet he may
from time to time embed in the midst of his frank
speech statements easily susceptible of proof and to-
tally at variance with the facts.

Having repeatedly come across this trait, I took it
up for examination with a distinguished Bengali, one of
the most broad-minded of Indian public men. Said he:

"Our Mahabharata preaches truth above all. If we
have deviated it is because of the adverse circumstances

[303]

MOTHER INDIA

under which we long lived. If we lie it is because we
are afraid to face the consequences."

Then I laid it before a great mystic, spiritual teacher
of multitudes, who had favored me with a classic and
noble metaphysical discourse. His reply was:

"What is truth? Right and wrong are relative terms.
You have a certain standard; if things help you, you
call them good. It is not a lie to say that which is neces-
sary to produce good. I do not distinguish virtues.
Everything is good. Nothing is in itself bad. Not acts,
but motives, count."

Finally, I carried the matter to a European long
resident in India, and of great sympathy with the
Indian mind.

"Why," I asked, "do men of high position make
false statements, and then name in support documents
which, when I dig them out, either fail to touch the
subject at all or else prove the statement to be false?"

"Because," he replied, "to the Hindu nothing is false
that he wants to believe. Or, all materiality being noth-
ingness, all statements concerning it are lies. Therefore
he may blamelessly choose the lie that serves his pur-
pose. Also, when he presents to you the picture that it
suits him to offer, it never occurs to him that you might
go to the pains of checking up his words at the source."

In the same line, a well-informed New York jour-
nalist, in the winter of 1926-27, asked certain Indians
who had been publicly talking in the city: "Why do
you make such egregiously false allegations about con-
ditions in India?"

[304]

THE REFORMS

"Because," said one of them, speaking for the rest,
"you Americans know nothing of India. And your
missionaries, when they come back for more money,
tell too much truth, and hurt our pride. So we have to
tell lies, to balance up."

As his metaphysics work out, it is no shame to a
Hindu to be "caught in a lie." You do not embarrass
or annoy him by so catching him. His morality is no
more involved in the matter than in a move in a game
of chess.

Now, in the name of fair play, it cannot be too
strongly emphasized that this characteristic, this point
of view, this different evaluation, constitutes not neces-
sarily an inferiority, but certainly a difference, like the
color of the skin. Yet as a difference involved in the
heart of human intercourse, it must constantly be reck-
oned with and understood j else that intercourse will
often and needlessly crash.

(3051

Chapter XXIII

PRINCES OF INDIA

Thus far we have been dealing mainly with British
India, as distinct from the Indian Empire composed of
British India and the Indian States. Of the total area
of the Indian Empire 1,805,332 square miles 39
per cent, belongs to the Indian States. Of the total
population of the Empire 318,942,480 the Indian
States hold 23 per cent., or about 72,000,000 persons. 1
Individually, the states vary in size from properties of
twenty square miles or less to a domain as large as Italy.
Each is governed by its own prince, or, if the prince
be a minor, by his regent or administrator. Some of
the ruling houses are Hindu, some Muhammadan,
some Sikh, or, in accordance with "heir history.

The territorial integrity, as well as the sovereign
rights of the princes within their territories, was made
the subject of special pledge in Queen Victoria's Proc-
lamation of 1858 on assumption of the Paramount
Power. Laying down the principle that Britain not only
desired no extension of territory for herself, but would
permit no aggression from any quarter upon the do-
mains of the Indian States, the Queen added:
*

We shall respect the rights, dignity and honour of the Na-
tive Princes as our own; and we desire that they, as well as

1 See Statistical Abstract for British India from 1914-15 to
PP. 3-5-

[306]

PRINCES OF INDIA

our own subjects, should enjoy that prosperity and that social
advancement which can only be secured by internal peace and
good government.

The relation between the British Government and
the ruling chiefs is a treaty relation, not that of con-
queror and conquered. It leaves the princes free to de-
termine their own types of government, to levy their
own taxes, and to wield the power of life and death
within their territories. The basis of the relation, on
the part of Britain, is (a) non-interference in the states'
internal affairs, excepting in cases of grave need, while
exercising such progressive influence as may be tact-
fully possible j and (b) the safeguarding of the inter-
ests of the country as a whole, in matters of an Impe-
rial character. Foreign relations and negotiations be-
tween state and state, must, however, be conducted
through the Paramount Power. A British political of-
ficer, called Resident, is stationed in each of the larger
states, to advise the Ruling Chief. The small states, by
groups similarly, have their British advisers, members
of the political branch of the Viceregal Government.

Once a year the Chamber of Princes, under the
chairmanship of the Viceroy, convenes at Delhi for
discussion of common policies. This assembly is a bril-
liant, stately and dignified function. And if, in ordi-
nary times, no great weight of business confronts it,
owing to the self-contained nature of the elements
represented, its convocation nevertheless serves a wise
purpose. For it tends, through personal acquaintance
under favorable auspices, to harmonize relations be-

[307]

MOTHER INDIA

tween the ruling houses, while affording a medium for
rapid common action in case of need. Nevertheless to
this meeting two or three of the greatest of the princes
have never yet been persuaded to come, on the ground,
it is said, that occasions would arise on which for me-
chanical reasons some one of their number must cede
precedence.

In visiting Indian States it is extremely difficult to
arrive at an idea of the actual nature of the admin-
istration. One is the guest of the prince, enjoying a
lavish hospitality. Like any private host, the prince is
showing off the estate, exhibiting those parts that are,
to him, most noteworthy. From ancient palaces to
modern improvements, there is much of great beauty
and interest to occupy one's eyes. And one scarcely
demands of one's host, East or West: "Now, where
are the defects of the picture?"

Nevertheless, it is definitely visible that several
states are well-governed, that most are fairly gov-
erned, including some that are backward, and that a
few are governed badly. These last exhibit the famous
"Golden Age," preserved like a fly in amber. Their
court life and the life of the people are sections from
the unexpurgated Arabian Nights. On the one side
strange outbreaks of rage, jealousy, violence, the sud-
den and final disappearance over night of a favorite
minister, lurid punishments and poisonings, and the
endless mortal intrigues of the zenana. On the other
side a populace too lifeless even to complain of the
burden that crushes it.

[308]

PRINCES OF INDIA

The old normal relation of the prince to the people
was the relation of a huge-topped plant to a poor, ex-
hausted, over-taxed root. He squeezed his people dry,
giving little or nothing in return. And under such a
prince, unless he be too outrageous, the people may
today be fairly content. For their whole historic expe-
rience tells them little or nothing of a possible other
mode of existence. And they dearly love the parade,
the great ceremonies and brilliant spectacles of birth-
days, marriages and religious fetes, that their princes
so regularly provide but which, because of the tax bur-
dens involved, are rarely afforded under British rule.

On the whole, however, it is obvious that the tend-
ency of state government is to level up. This is largely
due to the growing ambition of the chiefs for the con-
dition of their properties. Or again, progress is effected
when the removal of an unfit ruler leaves the admin-
istration of the state in the hands of the Resident, with,
it may be, a regent, during the minority of the heir. A
measure of comparison is thereby established, favoring
the birth of active discontent if a retrograde govern-
ment follows and tending gradually to force up its
quality from below.

As a particular instance, one may cite the case of a
certain prince whose minority lasted twenty years.
During this period the British Resident administered
the state, and, for the first time in its history, its reve-
nues went to the service of the people. Good roads and
bridges were built, schools were opened, a modern
hospital was established and endowed with a compe-

[309]

MOTHER INDIA

tent staff j order was secured j trade and manufactures
were fostered j the exchequer made solvent, the reserve
funds built up, justice was put within the reach of all.
And, all the years of this pleasant novelty, the people
sighed for the day when their prince, not only dearly
beloved but also ritualistically half-divine in their eyes,
should come home and rule over them as his fathers
had done over their fathers.

The day dawned. The boy took over. The wives and
the concubines, the court officials, the dancing girls and
the ambitious relatives at once laid hold on him, plying
him with every soft temptation that could dissolve his
energy and will-power, sap his manhood and make him
easy to control. In three years' time he had ruined the
work of the preceding twenty. The treasury reserves
were gone. Taxes shot up. Public services went flat.
The excellent doctor, who cost $500 a month, had been
replaced by a sixteen-dollar dealer in charms and po-
tions. The competent hospital staff was replaced by
useless hangers-on. The hospital itself had turned into
a kennel; and so on, through the departments, shab-
biness and decay overwhelming them all. No justice
was to be had and no appeal could be taken against
bought decisions, for there was none who cared to hear,
except at a price. Graft did everything, and the people
were bled to provide money for their young ruler's
extravagances and vices.

At last they came to their old friend, the Resident,
pleading:

"We did long to have him come to live among us

PRINCES OF INDIA

and rule over us. But we knew not how it would be.
We can bear no more. Let the Sahib return and give
us peace and justice and the good life we had before."

The people had begun to think.

Scandalous tales are told of the cruelties and mon-
strous deeds of certain princes, and a measure of
ground work probably underlies many such tales. But
none of them can be accepted without specific proof,
for the reason that the Indian anti-government press
seizes upon every suggestion of such material, spread-
ing it broadcast, elaborated and magnified without re-
gard to facts. It provides a text to attack Government
for laxness in permitting such things to bej although
where Government intervenes the same elements are
often quick to raise the cry of "alien despot."

The boy born to the throne comes into the world
with a fearful handicap. All want his favor, and the
ancient highroad thereto is the ministration to un-
bridled sensuality, arrogance and extravagance. But
sometimes there is a strong and intelligent Queen-
mother who defends her son. And sometimes the heir
is sent to a public school in England j or, he may spend
some years in one of the four Chiefs' Colleges in
India, where, also, wholesome influences are brought
to bear.

One of these influences is the give-and-take of life
among his peers. In his home he has no equal within
reach, and is, therefore, always with inferiors or elders.
A second influence for good is the constant effort to
rouse him from physical and mental sloth and to get

MOTHER INDIA

him to work and to play active games, especially games
such as tennis, which he can carry back to his home.
Not the least factor that the school wields in his favor
is the understanding friendship of the British head-
master, his appreciation of the boy's difficulties, present
and to come, and his quiet instillation of that active
ideal of princely pride which is the pride to serve.

In some cases the work of education seems com-
pletely lost in the boy's later life. But the development
of character in others is definitely lifting the whole
standard of government in the Indian States.

An outstanding example is that of the State of
Mysore, a principality of size nearly equal to that of
Scotland, with some six million inhabitants. The father
of the present prince was carefully trained for his
duties under British guidance. Acceding to a govern-
ment which, during his minority, had been set in order
by British supervision, he proceeded, with the aid of
a good Dewan, 2 to administer well and faithfully to
the interest of his people. Dying in 1894, he left a
minor heir, so that again the state, in the hands of the
Queen-regent, came under British guidance, while
again a young prince went into training for coming
responsibilities. In 1907 this prince was enthroned.
Since that time he has given a high example of un-
selfish and intelligent devotion to his duties.

A devout orthodox Hindu, his recent choice of a
Muhammadan Persian, Mr. Mirza Ismail, C.I.E.,
O.B.E., as Dewan, may be taken as a proof of his

* Premier.

PRINCES OF INDIA

single-eyed desire for the good of his state. The at)
of Mysore, with its wide, shaded avenues, its fine
modern public buildings, its parks and gardens, and its
floods of electric light, is a model town, clean and
bright. A large technical college, a large University
building with its separate library, an extensive hos-
pital, are among the many conspicuous and handsome
edifices. A big irrigation scheme is nearing completion.
The state's rich mineral resources, its agriculture and
its peasant industries and manufactures are being de-
veloped on progressive lines. Wages of both skilled
and unskilled labor have doubled in late years. A sys-
tem of bringing the people, through elected represen-
tatives, into periodic communication with the head of
the state on the state's affairs, is in successful operation.
And finally, to dismiss so pleasant a subject too briefly,
two blots on the picture are being removed.

First} An Edict has gone forth that, as between two
candidates for administrative office, the office shall go
to the better qualified man rather than to the man of
higher caste. And, second, the state's health record
being too low, the prince, through his Dewan, has not
stopped short of reaching for the best the world af-
fords. He has asked the International Health Board
of the Rockefeller Foundation to help him make
Mysore the cynosure of India.

The request, the second * of its sort to come from
any part of the Indian Empire, has been gladly hon-

8 The first request to the Rockefeller Foundation to advise a gov-
ernment in India came from that of the Madras Presidency. An
officer of the Foundation is now stationed there.

MOTHER INDIA

ored. The outcome will be of extraordinary interest

All of the princes keep armies, according to the
needs of their domains. Thus the Nizam of Hydera-
bad, with his state of nearly 83,000 square miles main-
tains an army of about twenty thousand men, while the
Maharaja of Datia, with but 911 square miles, com-
mands a full company of Infantry and a battery of
seven field guns. Infantry, cavalry, artillery, and trans-
port corps compose the larger commands.

Here is a story, from the lips of one whose veracity
has never, I believe, been questioned. The time was
that stormy period in 1920 when the new Reforms Act
was casting doubt over the land and giving rise to the
persistent rumor that Britain was about to quit India.
My informant, an American of long Indian experience,
was visiting one of the most important of the princes
a man of great charm, cultivation and force, whose
work for his state was of the first order. The prince's
Dewan was also present, and the three gentlemen had
been talking at ease, as became the old friends that
they were.

"His Highness does not believe," said the Dewan,
"that Britain is going to leave India. But still, under
this new regime in England, they may be so ill-advised.
So, His Highness is getting his troops in shape, accu-
mulating munitions and coining silver. And if the Eng-
lish do go, three months afterward not a rupee or a
Virgin will be left in all Bengal."

To this His Highness, sitting in his capital distant

[314]

PRINCES OF INDIA

from Bengal by half the breadth of India, cordially
agreed. His ancestors through the ages had been preda-
tory Mahratta chiefs.

The Swarajists, it would appear, forget that, the
moment government were placed in their hands, the
princes would flash into the picture as powers in the
land, severally to be reckoned with exactly as they
were a century ago; and that the Indian Army, if it
hung together at all, might be more likely to follow
one of the outstanding princes rather than the com-
mands of a Legislative Assembly composed of a type
that India has never known or obeyed.

The Indian mind is cast in the mould of autocratic
aristocracy. A natural war means a princely leader and
unlimited loot. If His Highness above had set out for
Bengal, the manpower of the countrysides, barring
Britain's presence, would surely have romped after
him.

But the princes know well that if Britain were to
withdraw from India, they themselves, each for him-
self, would at once begin annexing territory; that all
would be obliged to live under arms, each defending
his own borders; and that the present-day politician
would in the first onset finally disappear like a whiff
of chaff before flame.

The princes, however, want no such issue. They
frankly say that they enjoy the $ax Britannica, which
not only relieves them from the necessity of sustaining
larger military establishments, but which gives them

[315]

MOTHER INDIA

the enjoyment of public utilities, as railroads, good
highroads, ports, markets, mail, and wires, while per-
mitting them to develop their properties in peace.
Their attitude during the War was wholly loyal, and
they contributed munificently of money, men and
goods to the Empire's cause. In a word, they are a
company of high-spirited, militant aristocrats strongly
interested that the British Crown shall remain suzerain
in India, but absolutely refusing to carry their com-
plaisance so far as to admit the Indian politician of the
Reforms Government as an agent to their courts.

Their supreme contempt of that class is not un-
mingled with distinct irritation that the Power to which
they acknowledge fealty stoops to parley with what
seems to them an impudent and ridiculous canaille.

"Our treaties are with the Crown of England," one
of them said to me, with incisive calm. "The princes
of India made no treaty with a Government that in-
cluded Bengali babus. We shall never deal with this
new lot of Jacks-in-office. While Britain stays, Britain
will send us English gentlemen to speak for the King-
Emperor, and all will be as it should be between
friends. If Britain leaves, we, the princes, will know
how to straighten out India, even as princes should."
Then I recall a little party given in Delhi by an
Indian friend in order that I might privately hear the
opinions of certain Home Rule politicians. Most of the
guests were, like my host, Bengali Hindus belonging
to the western-educated professional class. They had
spoken at length on the coming expulsion of Britain

[316]

PRINCES OF INDIA

from India and on the future in which they themselves
would rule the land.

"And what," I asked, "is your plan for the princes?"
"We shall wipe them out! " exclaimed one with con-
viction. And all the rest nodded assent.

13*7 J

PARTY

Interlude

INTO THE NORTH

Kohat, guarding the mouth of Kohat Pass just
one little post on the long line of the North-West
Frontier defenses. All compact and tight-set, fit for
the grim work it faces. Beds of blue violets along its
streets. Beds of blue violets in gardens, for somehow
your Briton will have flowers, wherever you strand
him. Barbed wire entanglements girdling the town.
Lights every hundred paces, and heavy-armed sen-
tries. Big arc searchlights at each corner of each house,
turned on full blaze at dusk. No shrubs, no trees or
other cover for skulkers, allowed too near a dwelling.
No white woman permitted outside the wire after day-
light begins to fail; not because of fears, but because
of things that have happened. Army officers' wives
they are, the few white women in Kohat j the quiet,
comradely sort that play the whole game to the finish.

And not one moment of any day or night, in this or
any Frontier post, is free from mortal danger.

Under the wing of the Post, an Indian town, ringed
about by high mud walls. Bazaars, mosques, temples,
blind-faced houses in pinched and tortuous streets,
where hawk-nosed men in sheepskin coats, with rifles
lying in the crook of their arms, shoulder bullocks and
asses for passage. Hundreds of little stalls, like booths

[321]

MOTHER INDIA

in a country fair, reflect the Afghan boundary. Won-
derful shining slippers, heelless and curly-toed, for the
little feet of Muslim ladies j Persian bed-posts, gayly
lacquered} beautiful gauzes; block-printed silks and
cottons } vessels inlaid in tin and brass or copper j pea-
cock pottery} fine fox-skins from the mountains} red
rugs from Bokhara; meat, for this is a Muslim coun-
try} rice and curry and sugar, because certain Hindus
have ventured in, lending money while they sell their
wares and getting always richer with their money-
lending.

Getting too rich, maybe, and a little too confident.
For though the hawk-nosed man in the big sheepskin
coat may not be their match in playing with money,
that lurks in his half-humorous, wholly piercing hawk-
eye that should warn the boldest.

Besides, this hawk-nosed, hawk-eyed citizen is here
in his own country. And no more than a revolver-shot
away, in the gray, impending crags of the Frontier
mountains lurk his brother Muslims, the wild tribes
who call no man king or master, who know no business
other than that of raiding, and whose favorite year-
round sport is the kidnapping of Hindu money-lenders
to hear the queer sounds they emit in the course of the
subsequent entertainment.

In all this world, say the men who, day and night,
year in, year out, guard the frontier of India in all
this world are no fighters better than the tribesmen.
Also, behind them lies Afghanistan, like a couchant
leopard, green eyes fixed on the glittering bait of

[322]

INTO THE NORTH

India. And behind Afghanistan nay, in Kabul itself,
lurks "the Man that walks like a Bear," fingering gold
and whispering ceaselessly of the glories of a rush
across the border that shall sweep the Crescent through
the strong Muslim Punjab, gathering Islam in its
train; that shall raise the Muslims of the South and
so shall close from both sides, like a tide, forever, over
the heads of the Hindus.

"Why not?" asks the Bear. "Are you feebler men
than your fathers? What stops you? The English? But
look! I worry them on the other flank, stirring up the
silly Hindus, North and South, against them. Already
these English relax their hand, as the councils of their
home-country weaken. And, I, the Bear, am behind
you. Look at the loot and the killings! Drive in your
wedge! Strike!"

L323J

Chapter XXIV

FIREBRANDS TO STRAW

Roughly speaking, three-quarters of the population
of British India are Hindus, if the 60,000,000 Un-
touchables be computed with the Hindus. 1 Roughly
speaking, one quarter of the population of British India
is Muhammadan. And between the two lies a great gulf
whence issues a continuous threatening rumble, with
periodic destructive outbursts of sulphur and flame*

This gulf constitutes one of the greatest factors in
the present Indian situation.

Its elements formed integral parts of the problem
that the British Crown assumed in 1858. And if for the
first half-century of Crown rule they remained largely
dormant, the reason is not obscure. During that half*
century, Government was operated by British officers
of the Civil Service, both in the administrative and in
the judicial branches. These officers, in the perform-
ance of their duties, made no difference between Hindu
and Muhammadan, holding the general interest in an
equal hand. Therefore, being in the enjoyment of jus-
tice and of care, man by man, day by day, and from an

1 The Census of India of 1921 shows about three and a quarter mil-
lion Sikhs and about one and a sixth million Jains, of both of which
sects many members call themselves Hindus. The Buddhists, num-
bering eleven and a half millions, are largely confined to the Province
of Burma, outside the Indian Peninsula.

[324]

FIREBRANDS TO STRAW

outside authority that neither Hindu nor Muhamma-
dan could challenge, neither party was roused to
jealousy, and religious communal questions scarcely
arose.

In 1909, however, the wind switched to a stormy
quarter. The Minto-Morley scheme was enacted by
Parliament as the "Indian Councils Act."

The effect of this measure was instantly to alarm the
Muhammadan element, rousing it into self-conscious-
ness as a distinct and separate body, unorganized, but
suspicious, militant in spirit and disturbed about its
rights. For it saw, clearly enough, that in any elected
legislature, and in any advantages thereby to be gained,
the Hindu was practically sure to shoulder the Mu-
hammadan out of the path.

Now in order to understand how this situation came
about, it is necessary to recall that Muhammadanism
first came to India as the religion of the conqueror} that
for five hundred years its arm controlled the greater
part of India, during which period Persian was the
language of the court, the language of literature and
verse, the language of the law. But the Muhammadan,
though he learned his Koran and his Persian verse, was
as a rule an open-air sort of man who would rarely
bother his own head with pens or books if he could find
another to do the job for him. Therefore, whenever
some Brahman, with his quick brain and facile memory,
acquired a knowledge of Persian and thereby released
his further store of learning for the master's use, he
was apt to find a desirable niche in government service.

MOTHER INDIA

Consequently, for five centuries or so, the Brahman
did much of the paper work, while the Muhammadan
commanded the country.

The history of the interval between Islam's effec-
tive dominance and the assumption of direct adminis-
tration by the British Crown has been elsewhere out-
lined. 2 It was twenty-one years previous to the latter
event back in the days of the East India Company
that a little seed was sown with whose fruit we now
deal.

This was the changing of the language of the Courts
of Justice from Persian to English.

The change took place as a logical part of the west-
ernizing of Indian education. It looked simple. Its re-
sults have been simple, like the results of a clean stroke
of the ax. The Calcutta University Commission thus
suggests the initial process: 8

The influence of the Act of 1837 and the Resolution of
1844 [giving preference in government appointments to In-
dians who had received a Western education] upon the Hindu
bhadralok * from among whom all the minor officials had long
been drawn, was bound to be decisive. They had long been
in the habit of learning a foreign language Persian as a
condition of public employment; they now learnt English
instead. It was, indeed, the Hindus who alone took advantage
of the new opportunities in public education in any large num-
bers. The Musalmans naturally protested strongly against the
change; which was, indeed, disastrous for them. Hitherto their

2 See pp. 283 et seq., ante.

8 Report, Vol. I, Part I, pp. 37-8.

4 Professional classes.

FIREBRANDS TO STRAW

knowledge of Persian had given them a considerable advan-
tage. They refused to give up learning it. It was for them
the language of culture. To take up English in addition would
be too heavy a burden; moreover, they had learnt to think of
English as associated with Christian teaching, owing to the
activity of the missionaries, and they were less willing than
the Hindus to expose their sons to missionary influences. Their
pride and their religious loyalty revolted; and they stood aloof
from the movement.

Literate or illiterate, the Muhammadan is a passion-
ate monotheist. "There is but One God." His mosques
are clear of images. His frequent daily prayer is offered
straight to the invisible One Omnipotent. And although
he respects Christianity as a revealed religion and rev-
erences Christ as an inspired teacher, the doctrine of
the Trinity constitutes an impossible heresy. His faith
is his highest possession, and he would not willingly
open the door to what he considered impure doctrine
by learning its vehicle, the English tongue.

Deeply hurt by the alternatives forced upon it, Islam
withdrew into itself, little foreseeing the consequences
of its withdrawal.

As long as British officials administered the affairs
of India in town and village, the potentiality of the
situation thus created remained obscured. But the first
gun of the Minto-Morley "Reforms," rent the cur-
tain, and the startled Islamic chiefs, their hands on the
hilt of the sword a-rust in the scabbard, peered forth
half-awake upon a world dark with shapes of ill-omen.

And so, greatly at a disadvantage, the Muslims as

[327]

MOTHER INDIA

a political entity reappeared in the field. Yet over the
wide country, in the villages and the hamlets, the stir
scarcely reached. For there, still, the British official
alone represented Government, dealing justice and
favor with an even hand, and Muslim and Hindu, side
by side, lived at peace.

Then came 1919, the extension of the "Reforms" of
1909, the transfer of much power, place and patronage
from British into Indian hands, and the promise, fur-
thermore, of a reviewal of the field at the end of a
third ten-year interval, with an eye to still further
transfers.

From that moment, except in country districts un-
reached by agitators, peace between the two elements
became a mere name an artificial appearance main-
tained wholly by the British presence. And now, as
1929 draws nigh, the tension daily increases, while the
two rivals pace around each other in circles, hackles up,
looking for first toothhold.

For a time during the political disturbances that fol-
lowed the War a brief farce of unity was played by
the leaders of that day. Mr. Gandhi embraced the
Khilafat 5 agitation as embodied in those picturesque
freebooters, the Ali brothers, if thereby the Muham-
madan weight might be swung with his own to embar-
rass the British administration. But the Khilafat cause
itself died an early death. And a single incident of the

5 An Islamic movement aiming at the restoration of Turkey to pre-
war status, including her reconquest of the emancipated Armenians
and Arabs, and her recovery of Palestine, Syria, Thrace, and the
Dardanelles.

[328]

FIREBRANDS TO STRAW

Gandhi-Ali alliance may be cited to illustrate the actual
depth of the brotherhood it proclaimed.

Up on the mountains overlooking the Malabar coast,
among a population of about two million Hindus, live
a people known as the Moplahs, descendants of old
Arab traders and the women of the country. The Mo-
plahs, who themselves number about a million, live in
surprisingly clean and well-kept houses, have often
intelligent, rugged faces and, according to my own
experience, are an interesting and friendly primitive
folk.

But, zealot Muhammadans, they have ever been
prone to outbreaks of religious passion in which their
one desire is to be sent to Paradise by a bullet or a
knife, first having piled up the longest possible list of
non-believers dead by their hands.

Among these simple creatures, in the year of dis-
orders 1921, the political combination above indicated
sent emissaries preaching a special edition of its doc-
trines. Government's hand, these proclaimed, was
raised against the holy places of Islam. Government
was "Satanic," an enemy of the Faith. Government
must and would be driven out of India and that right
soon. Swaraj must be set up.

From mosque to mosque, from hamlet to hamlet,
from cocoanut grove to cocoanut grove, the fiery words
passed. And, whatever meaning they might bear for
an abstract philosopher, to the simple Moplah, as, in
those miserable years, to so many millions of simple

[329]

MOTHER INDIA

Hindus all over the land, they meant just what they
said War.

But, the point that Mr. Gandhi missed, whatever
the humorous Ali brothers may privately have thought
about it, was this: Swaraj, to a Moplah, could only
mean the coming of the earthly Kingdom of Islam, in
which, whatever else happened or failed to happen, no
idol-worshiping Hindu could be tolerated alive.

So the Moplahs, secretly and as best they could,
made store of weapons knives, spears, cutlasses. And
on August 20, 1921, the thing broke loose- As if by a
preliminary gesture of courtesy to the sponsors of the
occasion, one European planter was murdered at the
start. But without further dissipation of energy the
frenzied people then concentrated on the far more
congenial task of communal war. First blocking the
roads, cutting the telegraph wires and tearing up the
railway lines at strategic points, thereby isolating the
little police stations scattered through the mountains,
they set to work, in earnest and in detail, to establish
a Muslim Kingdom and to declare a Swaraj after their
own hearts.

Their Hindu neighbors, though outnumbering them
two to one, seem to have stood no chance against them.
The Hindu women, as a rule, were first circumcised
"f orcibly converted," as the process is called and were
then added to Moplah families. The Hindu men were
sometimes given the choice of death or "conversion,"
sometimes flayed alive, sometimes cutlassed at once and
thrown down their own wells. In one district, the

[3303

FIREBRANDS TO STRAW

Ernad Taluk, over nine hundred males were "forcibly
converted" and the work spread on through the moun-
tain-slopes.

As rapidly as possible police and troops were thrown
into the country, by whose work, after six months of
trying service, the disorders were quelled. But not un-
til some three thousand Moplahs had cast away their
lives, without reckoning the Hindus they accounted
for, not until much property had been destroyed and
many families ruined, and not until a long list of pris-
oners awaited trial for guilt that certainly belonged on
heads higher than theirs.

Meantime, the circumcised male Hindus wandered
up and down the land calling upon their brethren to
take warning.

A trained American observer, agent of the United
States Government, chanced to be in the region at the
time. His statement follows:

"I saw them in village after village, through the
south and east of Madras Presidency. They had been
circumcised by a peculiarly painful method, and now,
in many cases, were suffering tortures from blood pois-
oning. They were proclaiming their misery, and calling
on all their gods to curse Swaraj and to keep the British
in the land. 'Behold our miserable bodies! We are de-
filed, outcasted, unclean, and all because of the ser-
pents who crept among us with their poison of Swaraj.
Once let the British leave the land and the shame that
has befallen us will assuredly befall you also, Hindus,
men and women, every one.*

MOTHER INDIA

"The terrors of hell were literally upon them.

"And the Brahman priests were asking one hundred
to one hundred and fifty rupees a head to perform
the purification ceremony which alone could save the
poor creatures' souls.

"This ceremony consisted in filling the eyes, ears,
mouth and nose with soft cow-dung, which must then
be washed out with cow's urine, after which should be
administered ghee (clarified butter), milk and curds. It
sounds simple, but can only be performed by a Brah-
man, and with proper rites and sacred verses. And the
price which the Brahmans now set upon their services
was, to most of the needy, prohibitive. Their distress
was so desperate that British officials, for once inter-
fering in a religious matter, interceded with the Brah-
mans and persuaded them, in view of the large num-
ber concerned, to accept a wholesale purification fee of
not over twelve rupees a head."

I have not verified the final item in this statement.
My informant, however, besides having been on the
spot at the time, is professionally critical as to evidence.

If there was anything particularly Muhammadan in
this outbreak, it was in the feature of "forcible con-
version" rather than in the general barbarity educed.
Less than six months before the Moplah affair began,
occurred the Chauri Chaura incident in the United
Provinces, far away from Malabar.

An organization called the "National Volunteers"
had lately been formed, more or less under pay, to act
as a militia for the enforcement of the decrees of the

[332]

FIREBRANDS TO STRAW

Working Committee of the Indian National Congress.
This "Congress" is a purely political organization, and
was, at the time, under the control of Mr. Gandhi.

On February 4, 1921, a body of National Volun-
teers, followed by a mob whom their anti-government
propaganda had inflamed, attacked the little police sta-
tion at Chauri Chaura, within which were assembled
some twenty-one police constables and village watch-
men, the common guardians of the rural peace. The
peasantry and the "Volunteers," numbering altogether
some three thousand men, surrounded the police sta-
tion, shot a few of its inmates dead, wounded the rest,
collected the wounded into a heap, poured oil over
them, and fried them alive.

This was as Hindu to Hindu.

Again, in the Punjab during the disorders of 1919,
anti-Government workers launched a special propa-
ganda for the violation of foreign women.

Its public declarations took the form of posters such
as these: "Blessed be Mahatma Gandhi. We are sons
of India . . . Gandhi! We the Indians will fight to
death after you;" and "What time are you waiting for
now? There are many ladies here to dishonor. Go all
around India, clear the country of the ladies," etc., etc.*

This was as Indian to white man.

Such language, to such a public, could carry neither
a figurative nor a second import. Had time been given
it to do its work, had a weak hand then held the helm

See Disorders Inquiry Committee, 1919-20, Report, Chapter VII
ior placards posted in and around Lyallpur, in April, 1919.

[333]

MOTHER INDIA

of the Punjab, an unbearable page had been written in
the history of India.

And if these three instances are here brought for-
ward from among the scores of grim contemporaneous
parallels with which they can be diversified and reen-
forced, it is not for the purpose of shaming the Indian
peoples, but rather to point out the wild, primitive and
terribly explosive nature of the elements that politi-
cians and theorists take into their hands when they
ignite those people's passions.

In most rural regions even now no developed
Hindu-Muhammadan animosity exists, and the two
elements live together amicably enough as neighbors,
unless outside political agents have disturbed them.

Instances occur, to be sure, such as that in the Dis-
trict of Bulandshahr, near Delhi, in the year 1924,
when the Ganges flooded. It was a disastrous flood,
sweeping away whole villages and their inhabitants,
man and beast. Upon certain Hindu ferrymen and fish-
ermen, the local owners of boats, depended the first
work of rescue. And these made use of the opportunity
to refuse to take a single drowning Muhammadan out
of the water.

But, on the other hand, I recall visiting a village
night-school, set up by Muhammadans for their own
boys, which was in part supported by contributions
from the Hindu neighbors. This was in Nadia District,
in Bengal, where the villagers of the two religions
seemed to bear no sort of ill-will toward each other,
and where an ever-active British Deputy Commissioner

[334]

FIREBRANDS TO STRAW

was their confidant and chosen counsellor in all their
affairs.

Something, again, is to be learned from the simple
history of a park designed for the city of Lucknow.
When the ground came to be surveyed, it was found
that a little Hindu temple lay in one corner of the
allotted area. Following their established policy in such
matters, the British authorities left the temple undis-
turbed.

Then came the Muhammadans of the city, saying:
"We, too, desire a place in this fine new park wherein
to say our prayers."

So the Municipal authorities arranged that a suit-
able open space be set aside at the opposite corner of the
park for the Muhammadans. And the Hindus wor-
shiped in their temple, and the Muhammadans wor-
shiped in their open space, both quite happily and
innocently, for a matter of eight years.

In the interval came the "Reforms," came the fruit
of the "Reforms," came a tension, stiffening steadily.

For Lucknow Is a Muhammadan city, in the sense
that all the irrportant people, all the old families, all
the great buildings and monuments, are of the ancient
Muhammadan kingdom of Oudh. Wherefore the
Muhammadans felt that if the control of India was
about to revert to Indians' hands their city of Lucknow
ought to revert to them.

But, though the history and the aristocracy of Luck-
now are indubitably Muhammadan, in the population
of Lucknow the Hindu outnumbers the Muhammadaa

[335]

MOTHER INDIA

three to one. Wherefore the Hindus, filled with sud-
den fear of the future, now asked each other:

"If this Swaraj is indeed coming, where will it plant
us Hindus of Lucknow? Under Muhammadan mas-
ters? Better were we all dead men!"

Upon which they began to organize, to assert them-
selves, perhaps rather aggressively and offensively, and
particularly to do so each evening, toward sunset, in
that little old temple by the park.

Now, sunset is an hour appointed for Muslim devo-
tion. For eight years the Muslim prayer-rugs had been
spread, five minutes before sunset, in that same little
park, and the faithful, kneeling in rows, had said their
vespers there. Nor would they submit to interruption
by obstreperous Hindus now. So, they issued an edict:
The Hindus, hereafter, must choose for their temple
meeting a time that did not clash with the Muham-
madans' evening prayer.

The Hindus resented the edict of the Muhamma-
dans. The Muhammadans resented the resentment of
the Hindus. Tinder smoldered up to *lame. And pres-
ently big gangs of each religion gathered in the park
at one and the same hour to fight the thing to a finish.

In the matter ensuing, the Muhammadans seem to
have been the more skillful, since they swept the field
quickly of human impedimenta and were about to
smash the offensive temple itself, when a detachment
of police, reenforced by British troops, intervened.

Thus this particular incident came to a standstill,
such of the combatants as were able dispersing to

[336]

FIREBRANDS TO STRAW

their homes. But an intense and really dangerous feel-
ing, bred of the battle and of the fear and jealousy in
the air, survived in full vigor. If a small lurking party
of the other side saw a Hindu or a Muhammadan pass
in the street, that party would dash out, seize and
beat him. To restore confidence it was necessary for two
or three days to patrol the city streets with British
cavalry.

Enter, then, the British District Commissioner for
cities, as well as rural parts, have their commissioners.
And the Commissioner, obviously, must "arrange."
For the quarrel was literally ruining the town. Trade
was suffering, small shops were failing, the people
were boycotting each other, and fresh broils and vio-
lence, promising any eruption, disfigured every day.

So the Commissioner invited the leaders of the fac-
tions to come to his house and talk it over because his
house was the only place where they would meet in
peace. They came, and sat, and came again. They sat
and talked and talked again. And neither party would
yield an inch.

The Hindus insisted that they must begin to beat
their prayer drums five minutes before sunset. The
Muhammadans as firmly maintained: "At exactly five
minutes before sunset we must begin our evening wor-
ship, which you Hindus shall not disturb."

Yet at last the Commissioner prevailed. For he elic-
ited from the Hindus a concession of five minutes,
and from the Muhammadans a concession of five min-
utes. Then, with his combined winnings safe under his

[337]

MOTHER INDIA

feet, he proceeded to extract from the Hindus a prom-
ise that, during the last ten minutes before sunset,
they would not play music in their temple j and from
the Muhammadans a promise that on the dot of the
first of the silent ten minutes they would begin their
ten-minute vesper prayer.

For, during the conferences in the Commissioner's
drawing room, the fact had developed that the Mu-
hammadans' objection lay, not to the Hindus' praying,
but to the din they made at their prayers, hammering
temple gongs and drums.

Those joint conferences in the Commissioner's draw-
ing room lasted, altogether, fifteen hours. As the fif-
teenth hour closed, the Commissioner's dinner-gong
rang in the hall. Whereupon one of the Hindus pon-
dered aloud:

"That gong's voice, over in our temple, wouldn't
reach so far."

"Will you try it and see?" asked the Commissioner,
quickly. And to this day the Hindus of that Lucknow
temple worship to the low and mellow voice of the
British Commissioner's dinner-gong.

But that experienced official is by no means deluding
himself with the notion that he can now go to sleep on
his post.

[338]

Chapter XXV

SONS OF THE PROPHET

In December, 1916, a political body called the All-
India Muslim League united with the Indian National
Congress already mentioned, in proclaiming the iden-
tity of Muhammadan and Hindu interests, and in
asserting their common desire for Swaraj.

The white light of the Moplah uprising remained
yet veiled on the knees of the future, but at the joint
act of the two organizations, the Muhammadans' in-
stinct of self-preservation, far and wide over India,
took alarm. So that when, in the autumn of 1917, Mr.
Montagu, Secretary of State for India, sat in Delhi to
receive from Indian interests their views on the sub-
ject of his proposed Reforms, association after asso-
ciation came forward to deplore or to repudiate the act
of the All-India Muslim League} and the language
they used was simple enough. Said the United Prov-
inces Muslim Defence Association: 1

. . . any large measure of self-government which might cur-
tail the moderating and adjusting influence of the British
Government could be nothing short of a cataclysm.

Said the Indian Muslim Association of Bengal: a

1 Addresses Presented in India to His Excellency the Viceroy and
the Right Honourable the Secretary of State for India, London,
p. 10.

Ibid., p. 30,

[339]

MOTHER INDIA

In the existing backward condition of the majority of
Hindus and Muslims, with their divergent creeds, castes, in-
stitutions and clashing interests, the differences which separate
the Hindu from the Muslim cannot but be reflected in their
dealings and relations with each other. . . No careful ob-
server will be deluded by the deceptive unanimity of the Na-
tional Congress and the Muslim League . . .

The Indian Muslim Association . . . does not agree to
the wisdom of any catastrophic changes likely to weaken the
permanance and stability of British rule in India, upon the
broad foundations of which rest all our hopes and aspirations
of constitutional and administrative progress.

Said the Association to Safeguard the Muslim In-
terests in the Province of Bihar and Orissa: *

We cannot deprecate too strongly the want of foresight
displayed by some of our co-religionists in endorsing in their
entirety, the views and claims of the Congress. Already
there is strong tendency visible in certain quarters to oppress
and terrorise the Musalmans and ignore . . . their interests.
The guiding principle of the English rule up to now has
always been to administer the affairs of Indian Empire with
impartiality in the presence of diverse religions and nationali-
ties of which it is composed. . . .

The South India Islamia League 4 presented a plea
in which they reminded Mr. Montagu that, being a
minority community, they

. . . realise the value of the British Government in holding
the scales even between different classes in this country . . .

8 Addresses Presented in India to PI is Excellency the Viceroy and
the Right Honourable the Secretary of State for India, p. 40.
4 Ibid., pp. 62-3.

[340]

SONS OF THE PROPHET

[and] are opposed to any scheme of political reconstruction
which tends to undermine the authority of British Govern*
ment in India, but are strongly in favour of gradual progres*
sive political development.

The Muttialpet Muslim Anjuman, a Muhammadan
educational society of Madras, implored Mr. Mon-
tagu to stay his reforming hand: 5

The Britisher alone can hold the scales even between the
various communities. Whenever our interests collide with
those of other communities, it is to him we look up as the
embodiment of justice and fair play. Whatever reforms may
be introduced, we trust that nothing will be done to under-
mine the authority of the British Government in India.

The Muhammadans of the Bombay Presidency pre-
sented an anxious appeal which read in part: 6

It is freely asserted that in no distant future the English
bureaucracy will disappear and an Indian majority in the
Councils will take its place. Whatever may have been the de-
fects of that much abused bureaucracy in the past, it must be
admitted that it has had one redeeming merit, viz., that of
holding the balance even as between the two principal com-
munities in India, and thus protecting the weak against the
strong.

But in view of the nature of Muhammadan thought,
a more ominous weight lay in a simpler pronounce-
ment. The Ulema is the body of official interpreters of
the Koran which, on occasion of doubt, delivers deci-

, p. 63.
. 78-9.

MOTHER INDIA

sions that guide the Muslim world. The solemn ver-
dict of the Ulema of Madras, now laid before the
British Secretary of State for India, was expressed in
three closely similar dicta, one of which follows: 7

"Verily, Polytheists are unclean." In case the British Gov-
ernment were to hand over the administration, as desired by
the Hindus, it would be contrary to the Sacred Law of Musul-
mans to live under them, Polytheists.

Saiyid Muhi-ud-din

Trustee of the endowments of the

Amir-un-Ni$a. Begum Sahiba Mosque

One who is forgiven!

The comparative numbers of the Hindu and the
Muhammadan element in the major provinces of Brit-
ish India may be seen from the following table: 8

Province Hindus Muhammadans

Madras 88.64 6.71

Bombay 76.58 J 9-74

Bengal 43.27 53.99

United Provinces 85.09 14.28

Bihar and Orissa . 82.84 10.85

Central Provinces and B^r.ir .... 83.54 4.05

Assam 54-34 28.96

Punjab 31.80 55.33

North-West Frontier Province . . 6.66 91.62

7 Addresses Presented in India to His Excellency the Viceroy and
the Right Honourable the Secretary of State for India, pp. 63-4.

8 Statistical Abstract for British India, from 1914-15 to 19*3-24,
pp. 14-5-

[342]

SONS OF THE PROPHET

Now, in view of the militant character developed in
any people by the Iskmic faith, it appears that British
India's Muhammadan factor, even where it is weakest,
is strong enough to make trouble. Always an interna-
tional rather than a nationalist, all over India the Mu-
hammadan is saying today: "We are foreigners, con-
querors, fighting men. What if our numbers are small!
Is it numbers, or men, that count? When the British
go, we shall rule India. Therefore it behooves us
quickly to gain such ground as we can."

The Hindu, on his side, wittingly misses no step to
consolidate his own position. And so wherever choice
rests in Indian hands, every office must be filled, every
decision taken, every appropriation spent, on religious
communal lines, while the other side fights it, tooth and
nail, and the actual merits of the matter concerned dis-
appear from the picture.

Heavily as this condition in all directions handicaps
the public service, nowhere is its influence more stulti-
fying than in the judiciary. Always an eager litigant,
the Indian finds in his religious quarrels endless occa-
sions for appeal to law. But, if the case must be tried
before an Indian judge, one side or the other is in
despair. For, though he were, in fact, a miracle of rec-
titude, he is expected to lean, in his verdict, to the side
of his own creed, and nothing can persuade the liti-
gant of the other faith that he will not do so.

The bench of India has been and is graced by some
native judges of irreproachable probity. Yet the Indian
is traditionally used to the judge who accepts a fee

[343]

MOTHER INDIA

from either side in advance of the trial, feeling that
probity is sufficiently served if, after the verdict, the
fee of the loser is returned. Bought witnesses are also
a matter of course j you may see them today squatting
before the court house waiting to be hired. "Theo-
retically I know it is irregular/' said one western-
educated barrister of Madras, "but practically I cannot
leave that advantage entirely in my opponent's hands.
It is our custom."

But when the matter of the Hindu-Muslim conflict
enters in, all else as a rule gives way. "How shall any
judge decide against his gods?" moans the unfortu-
nate. "And does he not hold court in the midst of my
enemies? Take me, therefore, before an English judge,
who cares naught for these matters but will give me
upright judgment, though I be right or wrong."

A freakish case was that of an old, experienced Mu-
hammadan District Magistrate of the United Provinces
before whom, last year, were brought certain police
officers of his district. These men had grossly failed in
their duty during certain religious riots, entailing
thereby the death of several persons. They richly de-
served a severe sentence. But they were Hindus.
Therefore the judge, fearing the accusation of reli-
gious animosity, let them off with a sentence so light as
to amount to an unjust award and an offense against
the public service.

More usual is the spirit illustrated in another inci-
dent, which occurred in February, 1926. An old Mu-
hammadan assistant engineer who had long served in

[344]

SONS OF THE PROPHET

the Irrigation Department under a British superior,
suddenly found himself taking orders from a Hindu.
This young man, just out of college and full of new
ideas, set himself to worry his senior, baiting and pin-
pricking till his victim could bear no more.

So, accompanied by his son, the old Muslim sought
out a major British official, asking for counsel.

"Sahib, can't you help my father? Surely it is a
shame, after all his years of service, to treat him so!"
exclaimed the son, at the end of the story.

But the Briton could not resist his opportunity.
"Mahmoud," said he. "You have always wanted
swaraj. You see, in this, what swaraj does to you. How
do you feel about it?"

"Aha!" replied the youngster. "But I've got a
Deputy Collectorship now. I take office shortly, and
when I do, God help the Hindus I get my hands on!"

The Muslim comprises but a bare quarter of the
population of British India. But that percentage is
growing. His gains indicate both superior fecundity
and superior vitality. His brain is not quick, but he has
often a gift of horse sense. He is beginning to see that
he must go to school. Granted time, opportunity and
a sense of security, he may wipe out his handicaps and
fit himself for full participation in the administration
of the country. Thrown into the arena today, he would
see but one recourse the sword.

And it should never for a moment be forgotten that
when the Muslims of India draw the sword, it will not
be as an isolated body but as the advance line of an

[345]

MOTHER INDIA

energy now banked up, like the waters of a brimming
reservoir, by the Frontier Defense of the Army.

A glance at the map shows a strip of territory some
three hundred and fifty miles long by from twenty to
fifty miles wide, lying along the northern boundary of
the Punjab. This strip is the North-West Frontier
Province. Beyond it lies a parallel strip of similar di-
mensions, tribal territory occupied by independent Mu-
hammadan clans, superb fighters whose sole business,
since time began, has been the business of raiding. Be-
hind this, again, lies Muhammadan Afghanistan and
Muhammadan Asia, a huge primeval engine always to
be swung as one great hammer by the call to loot and
a Holy War.

To release that force needs at any moment but a
word. Its ceaseless pressure along the thin steel line of
the frontier, its tenseness, its snapping, stinging electric
current, is scarcely realizable until one sees and feels
it for one's self.

Few Hindu politicians do realize it. "The Afghan
has kept off us these many long years. Why should he
come through now? Bah! It is a child's bogey!" they
say with dull eyes, as unaware of their own life-long
protected state and how it is brought about as the oyster
on its sea-bed is unaware of the hurricanes that blow.

The North- West Frontier Province, 95 per cent.
Muhammadan, lies today quiet and contented with its
government, a buffer state between, on the one hand,
the rich, part-Hindu Punjab and the vast soft Hindu
South, and on the other hand, the hungry Muslim

[346]

SONS OF THE PROPHET

fighting hordes whose fingers twitch and whose mouths
water to be at them. The contentment of the North-
West Frontier Province with things as they are is in-
valuable to the peace of India.

I talked with many leading men of that province.
All seemed of one mind in the matter. Here, theref ore f
are the exact words of a single representative a moun-
tain-bred man of Persian ancestry some generations
back big, lean, hawk-nosed, hawk-eyed, leader of
many, sententious until his subject snatched the bridle
from his tongue:

"The whole province is satisfied now and desires no
change. As for those little folk of the South, we have
never called them men. There is far more difference
between us and them than between us and the British.
If the British withdraw, immediate hell will follow,
in the first days of which the Bengali and all his tribe
will be removed from the earth. I can account for a
few, myself, with much pleasure. Cooperation between
the British and us is our one course. They have given
us roads, telephones, good water where no water was
before, peace, justice, a revenue from trade made pos-
sible only by their protection, safety for our families,
care for our sick and schools for our children. None of
these things did we have till they came. I ask you, is it
likely we shall throw them all away because a coward
and a sneak and our own inherited enemy calls for
'boycott,' and 'non-cooperation'? Nothing was ever
gained and much lost by that stupid 'non-cooperation.'
India is a big country and needs all our united strength

[347]

MOTHER INDIA

can do for it. Muslims and British and even Hindus.
But without the British no Hindus will remain in India
except such as we keep for slaves."

On December 26, 1925, over eight years after the
Indian National Congress and the All-India Muslim
League proclaimed their united demand for the self-
government of India, the former, or Hindu body, as-
sembled for its annual session. Its president, this time
a woman, a product of European life and education,
opened the proceedings with an address that deplored
the

. . . sharp and importunate sense of aloofness on the part
of my Muslim brothers, which, to the profound alarm and
resentment of the Hindu community, manifests itself in a
growing and insistent demand for separate and preferential
rights and privileges in academic, official, civic and political
circles of life.

A few days later the All-India Muslim League
convened. And the address of its president, Sir Abdur
Rahim, coming as a tacit reply to the earlier pronounce-
ment, was so clean-hewn as to constitute a landmark
in Indian history. It repays study at length. 9

Hindus and Mussalmans are not two religious sects like the
Protestants and Catholics in England but form two distinct
communities or peoples. . . . Their respective attitudes to-
wards life, their distinctive culture, civilisation and social hab-
its, their traditions and history no less than their religion,

Sir Abdur Rahim's address was published in pamphlet form by
Karim Bux Brothers, Calcutta.

[348]

SONS OF THE PROPHET

divide them so completely that the fact that they have lived
in the same country for nearly a thousand years has con-
tributed hardly anything to their fusion into a nation.

Referring to recent Hindu movements set on foot
to proselyte Mussalmans, and to train Hindus in the
arts of self-defense, the speaker said:

The Muslims regard these movements ... as the most
serious challenge to their religion which they ever had to meet
not even excepting the Christian crusades whose main objec-
tive was to wrest back from the Muslims some places sacred
to both. ... In fact, some of the Hindu leaders have talked
publicly of driving out the Muslims from India as the Span-
iards expelled the Moors from Spain. . . . We shall, un*
doubtedly be a big mouthful for our friends to swallow. . . .

Any of us Indian Mussulmans travelling, for instance in
Afghanistan, Persia, Central Asia, among Chinese Muslims,
Arabs, Turks . . . would at once be made at home and would
not find anything ... to which we are not accustomed. On
the contrary, in India, ... we find ourselves in all social
matters total aliens when we cross the street and enter that
part of town where our fellow Hindu townsmen live. . . .

It is not true that we Muslims would not like to see a self-
governing India provided the Government ... is made as
much responsible to the Muslims as to the Hindu. . . .
Otherwise, all vague generalities such as swaraj, or common-
wealth of India, or home-rule for India have no attraction
for us. ... But as a first step we must . . . definitely
check the baneful activities of those Hindu politicians who
under the protection of Englishmen's bayonets and taking
advantage of their tolerance and patience are sowing trouble

[349]

MOTHER INDIA

in the land to attain swaraj, the full implications of which
they do not understand and would never face. . . .

The real solution of the problem ... is to bring about a
state of things in which the conditions of life of the entire
population Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Parsis and Christians,
the peasants, labourers and Hindu untouchables will be so
improved economically and intellectually and the political
power so distributed in the general population, that domina-
tion by a class of monopolists and intelligensia, will have dis-
appeared and with that all strife between the different com-
munities.

It has been my lot to be in daily contact with educated
Englishmen, for nigh upon 35 years as practising barrister,
as Judge, . . . and last of all as Member of the Executive
Council of Bengal. . . .

I wish to acknowledge without reserve that I found that I
had much to learn from my English colleagues at every stage
of my career. ... I have also been associated with many
eminent countrymen of mine in the discharge of public duties
and I believe they will admit that most of the progressive
measures were originated by the initiative of Englishmen.
... In the Government, I cannot recall even a single occa-
sion when there was agreement on any question among us
Indians that our opinion was disregarded. ... I have not
known any one who has seriously suggested that the people of
this country left solely to themselves would be able at present
to set up a government of their own and maintain it against
outside attacks. ... It is best for us all to recognise frankly
that the presence of the English people ... is justified by
necessity. . . . England owes a great moral debt to India and
the only way she can discharge that debt is by taking all pos-
sible measures to help her to become self-reliant and strong.

[350]

SONS OF THE PROPHET

The best men of England recognise this obligation. ... I
do not know whether the revolutionaries have any political
programme; if they have, they have not divulged it. Their
immediate objective, apparently, is to overthrow the British
regime, and with it the entire present system of Government.
k We can, however, dismiss the revolutionaries because there is
not the least possible chance of their success.

We Muslims whose history for 1300 years and more has
been one of constant struggles and wars, spreading over Asia,
Africa and Europe, cannot but regard as extremely foolish
and insane the men who think that by throwing a few bombs
now and then, or shooting one or two Englishmen from be-
hind, or by rasing and looting the houses of unsuspecting and
defenceless Indian villagers and by killing and torturing them,
they are going to shake the foundations of British power in
India. . . . We Muslims cannot regard boys or men suffer-
ing from hysteria as serious politicians and the fact is signifi-
cant that not a single Muslim has joined them. . . .

Political measures are not the sole means of building up a
nation. At present we have not even a vernacular name for
the people of India including Hindus, Muslims and others,
nor a common language. ... It is neither by the English
alone nor by the Hindus or the Mussalmans acting singly, but
by the earnest and united efforts of all that the 300 millions
of India's population can be led to a higher destiny.

Sir Abdur Rahim's plain words brought down a
storm of accusation from the Hindu leaders and their
press, while the rancor between the two camps grew
stronger.

Meantime, grim potentialities were beginning to be
dimly perceived. The Calcutta Riots broke out. By

[351]

MOTHER INDIA

midsummer, 1926, thirty-one murderous explosions
had occurred since the beginning of the year, some with
heavy casualties. 10 It was already evident that both
sides, Muslim and Hindu, were becoming sobered by
the situation into which their mutual fears had brought
them. The old Gandhi-ist accusation that the secret
hand of Britain bred their dissensions still found its
mouthpieces j but these, commonly, were of the irre-
sponsible firebrand type who had no stake in the coun-
try save such as might best be served under cover of
smoke. Thinking men of either party saw the untena-
bility of the idea and began, however reluctantly, to
declare the need of a strong and impartial suzerain to
give them security in the advantages already in their
possession j advantages which, they now saw clearly
enough, had their roots in the British presence and
would be drowned in blood on the day that presence
was withdrawn.

The Summer Session of the Indian Legislative As-
sembly met in a mood to talk reason. Said Maulvi Mu-
hammad Yakub, a Muhammadan member, speaking
on the twenty-fourth day of August: xx

I do not agree with those who think that the Government
have a hand in fomenting communal riots and communal
feelings. I also do not think that the Government of India
have ever shown partiality towards any community in dealing
with communal matters.

10 For the list, see Legislative Assembly Debates, Vol. VIII, August
18, 1926, p. 12.

11 Ibid., August 24, 1926, pp. 280-3.

[352]

SONS OF THE PROPHET

There can be no two opinions that communal bitterness
. . . has now assumed an all-India importance. . . .

Sir, we are fed up with these communal frictions, and the
situation has become so very difficult that we cannot enjoy our
home life happily, nor do our festivals bring any joy to us.
... Is not the time ripe, . . . when we should ask the Gov-
ernment to come forward and help us, since we could not
solve the question ourselves?

A few months earlier such words could scarcely have
been spoken on that floor without rousing a flurry of
rebuttal. Today not a voice opposed them. Instead rose
that king-pillar of orthodox Hinduism, our old friend
the Dewan Bahadur T. Rangachariar of Madras, not
to rail at an "alien government," not to accuse it of
clumsy or arrogant interference in Indian affairs, but
to acknowledge that 12

. . . facts are facts, and they have to be faced by us like men.
... I admire the sincere spirit in which my Honourable
friend Maulvi Muhammed Yakub has come forward. He
feels the soreness of this disgraceful position . . . and I feel
it likewise. I am glad, and the whole country is glad, that His
Excellency Lord Irwin has taken it up in right earnest. . . .
We cannot achieve the results which we have at heart without
the co-operation of all people, official and non-official alike.
I want a majority of the people whose hearts are really bent
upon changing the situation.

The doctrine of non-cooperation with the established
Power led nowhere, as all now see. The mystic doctrine

18 Legislative Assembly Debates, August 24, 1925, pp. 2813-4.

[353]

MOTHER INDIA

of spiritual war, a war of "soul-force," that uses the
language of hate while protesting theories of love, had
logically and insistently projected itself upon the ma-
terial plane in the form of the slaughter of men. The
inability of individuals to subordinate personal, family
or clan interests and to hold together for team-work,
had been demonstrated. And the fact had been driven
home to the hilt that neither Hindu nor Muhamma-
dan could think in terms of the whole people.

For the moment, some of them see it. Can they hold
the vision? To have seen it at all marks gain.

[3547

Chapter XXVI

THE HOLY CITY

Edwin Arnold has written beautifully about Ben-
ares. Hundreds of people have also written about
Benares. Tourists, enraptured with its river-front pan-
orama, have exhausted their vocabulary in admiration.

And small wonder, for the scene is beautiful, instinct
with color and grace and with that sense of souls' up-
lifting that surrounds the high altar of any part of the
human race.

Benares is the Sacred City of the Hindu world.
Countless temples adorn it, set like tiers of crowns
above and among the broad flights of stairs that ascend
from the Ganges, Holy River. Chains of yellow mari-
golds are stretched across that river to welcome Mother
Ganges as she comes. And as the worshipers, clad in
long robes of tender or brilliant colors, bearing their
water-jars upon their heads or shoulders, trail up and
down the high gray steps, they seem so like figures in
the vision of a prophet of Israel that one almost hears
the song they sang as "they went up by the stairs of
the city of David, at the going up of the wall."

But my visit to Benares was made in the company
of the Municipal Health Officer, a man of whom no
artist-soul is apt to think.

This gentleman is an Indian. Before taking up his

[355]

MOTHER INDIA

present duties, he made preparatory studies in America,
in the enjoyment of a Rockefeller Foundation Scholar-
ship in Public Health. Without attempting to convey
an idea of his whole problem, one may indicate here
a few of its points.

The normal stationary population of Benares is about
two hundred thousand, of whom some thirty thousand
are Brahmans connected with the temples. In addition,
two to three hundred thousand pilgrims come yearly
for transient stays. And upon special occasions, such as
an eclipse, four hundred thousand persons may pour
into the city for that day, to depart a few days later
as swiftly as they came.

To take care of all this humanity the Municipality
allows its chief Health Officer an annual sum equal to
about ten thousand dollars, which must cover his work
in vaccination, registration of births and deaths, and
the handling of epidemics and infectious diseases.

Much of his best work lies in watching the pilgrims
as they debark from the railroad trains, to catch cholera
patients before they disappear into the rabbit-warrens
of the town. Let that disappearance once be effected
and the case will lie concealed until a burst of epidemic
announces the presence of the disease. For, although
the municipality pays the higher officials and the fore-
men of the Public Health Department fairly well, it
allows a mere pittance to its menial staff, with the
result that, if contagion is reported and disinfection is
ordered, the subordinates harass the people for what
they can wring from distress.

THE HOLY CITY

Benares is an old city. Some of its drains were built
in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. No one now
knows their course except that, wherever they start,
their outlets give into the river. Constructed of stone,
their location is sometimes disconcertingly revealed by
the caving-in of their masonry beneath a building or
a street. Sometimes, silt-choked at the outlet, their
mouths have been unwittingly or unthinkingly sealed
in the course of river-wall repairs. Not a few still
freely discharge their thick 1 stream of house-sewage
into the river, anywhere along its humanity-teeming
front. But most, having become semi-tight cesspools,
await the downpours of the rainy season, when their
suddenly swollen contents will push into the city's sub-
soil with daily increasing force.

The city stands on a bluff, her streets about seventy-
five feet above river level. The face of the bluff, for a
distance of three miles or more along the river front,
is buttressed by stairs and by high walls of stone.
These, because of their continuity, back up the sub-
soil water, which, from time to time, bursts the ma-
sonry and seeps through into the river, all along its
famous templed front. There, among the worshiping
drinkers and bathers, among the high-born pilgrim
ladies, the painted holy-men, the ash-pasted saddhus
and yogis, you may see it oozing and trickling down
from those long zigzag cracks that so mellow the
beauty of the venerable stones.

1 "Thick" in particular because of the little water used in Indian
houses.

[357]

MOTHER INDIA

Against bitter religious opposition, the British, in
1905, succeeded in getting a partial sewage system and
water pipe-line into the city. Its main pumping station
is at the south end of the town, not much habitation
lying above it. The water is settled in a tank, filtered,
and then put into general distribution, the Municipal
Health Officer himself doing a weekly chemical and
bacteriological analysis from each filter,

But the devout will not drink this filtered water.
Instead, they go daily to the river, descend the stairs of
some bathing-ghat, scoop up a vesself ul in the midst of
the bathers under the seepage-cracked wall, and carry
it home to quench the thirst of the household. All
warnings and protests of the Health Officer they meet
with supreme contempt.

"It lies not in the power of man to pollute the
Ganges." And "filtering Ganges water takes the holi-
ness out," they reply, firmly.

Now, whoever bathes in the Ganges at Benares and
drinks Ganges water there, having at the same time
due regard to the needs of the priests, may be cured of
the worst disease that flesh is heir to. Consequently
upon Benares are deliberately focused all the maladies
of the Hindu millions. Again, whoever dies in Benares,
goes straight to heaven. Therefore endless sick, hope-
less of cure, come here to breathe their last, if possible,
on the brink of the river with their feet in the flood.

Many of the incidents connected with this tenet are
exquisitely beautiful and exalted in spirit. But the
threat to public health needs little emphasis.

[358]

THE HOLY CITY

One such has to do with the over-burdened burning-
ghats.

The main burning-ghat lies directly in the middle
of the populous waterfront. "Nothing on earth can
move it from there," says *ny conductor, because the
place is of particular sanctity. So all I can do is to try
to see that all bodies are completely burned."

But complete burning takes a lot of wood. Not every
heir will or can face so heavy a cost. And the Indian-
run municipality, thus far, has been unable to interest
itself in the matter to the extent of giving an additional
quantity of wood when necessary to complete incinera-
tion.

"See those dogs nosing among the ashes. There
one has found a piece!" said I to the doctor, as we
stood looking on.

"Yes," he answered. "That happens often enough.
For they burn bodies here, sometimes rather incom-
pletely, at all hours of day and night. Still, if the dog
hadn't got that bit, it would simply have got into the
river, to float down among the bathers. As the dead
babies do, in any case. No Hindu burns an infant. They
merely toss them into the stream."

There are no latrines along the water-front The
people prefer to use the sandy places at the water's
brink among the bathing stairs. Thus and otherwise
one typhoid or cholera carrier may, during his stay,
infect ten thousand persons. The river banks are dried
sewage. The river water is liquid sewage. The faithful
millions drink and bathe in the one, and spread out

[359]

MOTHER INDIA

their clothes to dry upon the other. Then in due time,
having picked up what germs they can, they go home
over the length and breadth of India to give them
further currency, carrying jars of the precious water
to serve through the yean

Also, the beautiful and picturesque temples do their
part. This may be sufficiently indicated in the words
of a distinguished Brahman pathologist, educated in
European universities and an annual visitor to London
and Paris. Said he, with deep feeling:

"The temples of Benares are as evil as the ooze of
the river-banks. I myself went within them to the
point where one is obliged to take off one's shoes, be-
cause of sanctity. Beyond lay the shrines, rising out of
mud, decaying food and human filth. I would not walk
in it. I said No! But hundreds of thousands do take off
their shoes, walk in, worship, walk out, and put back
their shoes upon their unwashed feet. And I, a Hindu
and a doctor, must bear witness to that!"

The position of Public Health Officer of Benares,
one key to the health of India, means so large and
difficult a task that it would seem to confer honor and
distinction upon any man to whom it is entrusted. The
present incumbent appeared to be confronting his job
in a good spirit, determined to piece out his little means
with his wits. But I found in the attitude of an Indian
brother doctor a differing view. This man, also a
Rockefeller Foundation scholar, said: "That fellow
has a rotten job."

"Why rotten?" I asked, sincerely surprised.

[360]

THE HOLY CITY*

"Because it is so hard. But chiefly because of the
indignity that he, a Rockefeller scholar, should have
to serve under a white man. The Minister is an Indian,
of course. But the immediate superior, the Director of
Public Health, is a Briton. It is a miserable shame!"

Curiously enough, this remark was made while, with
the speaker, I was visiting an Indian attempt at sani-
tary self-help. The attempt was not brilliant, but at
least it was a beginning, and the workers were simple,
eager, unpretentious little folk hungry and thirsty for
encouragement. Seeing which hunger, our Rockefeller
scholar, now an official and to them a great luminary,
slowly, thoroughly, and without a glimmer of sym-
pathy, impaled them on the toasting-fork of his laugh-
ing scorn.

Other holy cities exist in India, other centers of pil-
grimages. Each, automatically, is a reservoir and a po-
tential distributing point of disease, demanding the
utmost vigilance and the utmost tact in handling.

But the public health problem presented by an ordi-
nary Indian city is stiff enough. Take, for example,
Lahore. The European section of the town has some-
thing about it of western America all of one age,
new, roomy, airy, with certain of its good modern
buildings erected by the public spirit of that fine old
Punjabi, Sir Ganga Ram. But Kim's Lahore, the old
Indian quarter, where the crowds live and
in particular its bazaar, where the crowds
gregate, is the danger-point that keeps JfleWirector oF
Health awake at night.

[361]

MOTHER INDIA

Streets about eight feet wide, twisting like earth
worms after a rain, straight up from whose edges rise
solid lines of dwelling houses sometimes several stories
high. At their base, on either side, a row of little open-
fronted shops, their cottons, brasses, holy pictures, em-
broideries, silks, grain-piles, jewelry, exposed on their
floors or walls. Many rickety wooden platforms, built
of intermittent slats, project from the front edge of the
shop floors, at street level, to the edge of the street.
Close under these platforms, on both sides of the road,
runs an open gutter about a foot wide. The gutter is in
steady and open use as a public latrine. Heaped on the
slats of the wooden platforms, just escaping the gutter,
are messes of fried fish, rice cakes, cooked curry, sticky
sweetmeats, and other foods for sale. All the food-
heaps lie practically underfoot, exposed to every sort
of accident, while flies, dirty hands, the nosing of dogs,
cows, bulls and sheep, and scurrying rats constantly add
their contributions} as do the babies and children with
sore eyes and skin diseases, pawing and rolling in the
midst of it all, enveloped in clouds of dust and of
acrid smoke.

And you must be careful, in walking, not to brush
against the wall of a house. For the latrines of the
upper stories and of the roofs drain down the outside
of the houses either in leaking pipes or else from small
vent-holes in the walls, dripping and stringing into the
gutter slow streams that just clear the fried fish and
the lollypops.

Mr. Gandhi, whose early sojourn in England has

[362]

THE HOLY CITY

influenced his general point of view in more ways, per-
haps, than he knows, has repeatedly written on this
subject. He says, for example: 2

Some of the [Indian] national habits are bad beyond de-
scription, and yet so ingrained as to defy all human effort.
Wherever I go this insanitation obtrudes itself upon my gaze
in some shape or another. In the Punjab and Sind, in total
disregard of the elementary laws of health we dirty our ter-
races and roofs, breeding billions of disease-producing mi-
crobes and founding colonies of flies. Down south we do not
hesitate to dirty our streets, and early in the morning it is
impossible for any one in whom the sense of decency is de-
veloped to walk through the streets which are lined with
people performing functions of nature which are _..eant to
be performed in seclusion and in spots which human beings
need not ordinarily tread. In Bengal the same tale in varying
form has to be told; the same pool in which people have
washed their dirt, their pots, and in which cattle have drunk,
supplies drinking water. . . . These are not ignorant people;
they are not illiterate; many have travelled even beyond the
borders of India. . . . No institution can handle this problem
better and more speedily than our Municipalities. They have
... all the powers they need in this direction, and they can
get more if necessary. Only the will is often wanting.

And again: 8

2 Young India, October 29, 1925, p. 371.

3 Ibid., November 19, 1925. Mr. Gandhi on "Our Insamtation," p.
399. In its issue of January 21, 1926, Young India all top clearly
shows that the sanitary habits of the body of Hindu political dele-
gates just assembled at Cawnpore in the Indian National Congress
are identical with the worst that Mr. Gandhi elsewhere describes.

[363]

MOTHER INDIA

Whilst the Government has to answer for a lot, I kno\>
that the British officers are not responsible for our insanitation.
Indeed if we gave them free scope in this matter, they would
improve our habits at the point of the sword.

Mr. Gandhi's judgment of the attitude of Indian-
ized municipal governments was corroborated by my
own observations in big and little towns in many parts
of India.

The city of Madras, for example, the third largest
city in the land, completed its present water system in
1914. The catchment area, in the hills, includes sev-
eral villages. The water, as it reaches the city plant, is
about as foul as water can be. By the design of the
system it is here passed through slow sand-filters into
a pure-water tank at the rate of 10,000,000 gallons a
day.

But the population of Madras has increased and the
capacity of the plant is now 4,000,000 gallons short of
the daily needs of the town. Detailed plans for the
construction of adequate new filters, backed by British
experts, have been laid before the Municipal Council.
But these sixty leaders and guardians of the public
weal, Indians all, have adopted a simpler scheme. As
I saw and heard for myself from the Indian Superin-
tendent on the spot, they now filter 10,000,000 gallons
of water a day, run it into the pure-water tank, then
add 4,000,000 gallons of unfiltered sewage, and dish
the mixture out, by pipes, to the citizens of the town.
In judging this performance, one must remember
that it takes longer to outgrow race thought and habits

[364]

THE HOLY CITY

of life than it does to learn English. The well-dressed
man who speaks with an easy Oxford accent may come
from a village where, if they desire a new well, they
do today what their fathers did a thousand years agoj
they choose the site not by the slope of the land but
by throwing a bucket of water over a goat. The goat
runs away. The people run after. And where the goat
first stops and shakes himself, though it be in the
middle of the main street, just there the new well is
dug.

[365]

Chapter XXVII

THE WORLD-MENACE

British India has half a million villages made of
mud. Most of them took all their mud from one spot,
making thereby a commensurate hole, and built them-
selves on the edge of the hole.

The hole, at the first rains, filled with water and
became the village tank. Thenceforward forever, the
village has bathed in its tank, washed its clothes in its
tank, washed its pots and its pans in its tank, watered
its cattle in its tank, drawn its cooking water from its
tank, served the calls of nature by its tank and with the
content of its tank has quenched its thirst. Being wholly
stagnant, the water breeds mosquitoes and grows
steadily thicker in substance as it evaporates between
rain and rain. It is sometimes quite beautiful, over-
grown with lily-things and shaded by feathered palms.
It and its uses pretty generally insure the democratiza-
tion of any new germs introduced to the village, and
Jts mosquitoes spread malaria with an impartial beak
though not without some aid.

Witness, small Bengali babies put out to lie in the
buzzing grass near the tank's edge.

"Why do you mothers plant your babies there to be
eaten alive?"

"Because if we protect our babies the gods will be
jealous and bring us all bad luck."

[366]

THE WORLD-MENACE

One of the most popular and most glorious gifts
that a liberal rich man can make to his own village is
the digging of an extra tank. One of the fondest
dreams of the British Public Health official is to get
all tanks filled up.

Nobody knows the exact incidence of malaria in
India, for village vital statistics are, perforce, kept by
primitive village watchmen who put down to "fever"
all deaths not due to snake-bite, cholera, plague, a
broken head or the few other things they recognize.
But a million deaths a year from malaria may be re-
garded as a conservative estimate of India's loss by
that malady.

Malaria originates in many places aside from tanks.
There is, for example, the water-front of the city of
Bombay, needless and deadly poison-trap for the sail-
ors of the world. There are railway embankments built
without sufficient drainage outlets, asking for remedy.
There is the water-logged country in the Punjab; there
is the new farm-land of the United Provinces, cut out
of the tiger haunts of the Himalayan foot-hills both
by nature heavily malarial, but both being ditched and
drained as a part of the huge agricultural irrigation
schemes now under development by Government.

Malaria, altogether, is one of the great and costly
curses of the land, not alone because of its huge death-
rate but even more because of the lowered physical and
social conditions that it produces, with their invitation
to other forms of disease.

Under present conditions of Indianized control, gov-

[367]

MOTHER INDIA

ernmental anti-malarial work, like all other preventive
sanitation, is badly crippled. Yet it generally contrives
to hold its own, though denied the sinews of progress.

And one recognizes with satisfaction, here and there,
a few small volunteer seedlings springing up, strangers
and aliens to the soil. Preeminent among these is the
Anti-Malaria Cooperative Society of Bengal, an Indian
organization now trying to bring control of malaria
into the lives of the people, through educating the vil-
lagers in means of protecting their own health. Much
praise is due to the enthusiasm of its chief exponent,
Rai Bahadur Dr. G. C. Chatter jee, with his ardent co-
adjutors, Dr. A. N. Mitra and Babu K. N. Banerjee.
Not only are these gentlemen, whom I visited at their
center in Nimta, trying to do anti-malaria work, but
also they are raising funds to make available to the
Bengali villagers the services of Indian doctors prop-
erly trained in western medicine.

Aside from its precious tank a village may have a
well. The depth of the wells averages from twenty to
forty feet. Their content is mainly surface seepage. A
little round platform of sun-dried brick usually encir-
cles the well, a log lying across the orifice. Squatting
on that platform and on that log at all hours of the
day you may see villagers washing their clothes, tak-
ing their baths, cleaning their teeth and rinsing their
mouths, while the water they use splashes back over
their feet into the pit whence they drew it.

Also, each person brings his own vessel in which to
draw the water he wants an exceedingly dirty and

[368]

THE WORLD-MENACE

dangerous vessel from a doctor's point of view which
he lowers into the well with his own old factotum rope.
When he returns to his house, he carries his vessel with
him, filled with well-water for the family to drink.

One of the great objectives of the British Sanitary
Administration is to put good wells into the villages
and to educate the people in their proper use. Now,
not infrequently, one finds such fucca wells. But,
exactly as in the Philippines, the people have a strong
hankering for the ancestral type, and, where they can,
will usually leave the new and protected water-source
for their old accustomed squatting- and gossiping-
ground where they all innocently poison each other.

As for pumps, the obvious means to seal the wells
and facilitate haulage, some have been installed. But,
as a rule, pumps are impractical for the reason that
any bit of machinery is, to the Indian, a thing to con-
sume, not to use and to care for. When the machine
drops a nut or a washer, no one puts it back, and
thenceforth that machine is junk.

Now, this matter of Indian wells is of more than
Indian importance. For cholera is mainly a water-
borne disease, and "statistics show that certain prov-
inces in British India are by far the largest and most
persistent centers of cholera infection in the world." *

The malady is contracted by drinking water infected
with the faeces of cholera patients or cholera carriers,
or from eating uncooked or insufficiently cooked in-

1 The Prevalence of Epidemic Disease . . . m the Far East, Dr. F.
Norman White, League of Nations, 1923, p. 24.

[369]

MOTHER INDIA

fected food. It finds its best incubating grounds in a
population of low vitality and generally weak and un-
resisting condition. 2 There is a vaccine for preventive
inoculation but, the disease once developed, no cure is
known. Outbreaks bring a mortality of from 15 to 90
per cent., usually of about 40 per cent. The area of
Lower Bengal and the valley of the Ganges is, in India,
the chief cholera center, but "the disease is very gen-
erally endemic in some degree throughout the greater
part of the whole [Indian] peninsula.' 1 *

Since the year 1817, ten pandemics of cholera have
occurred. In 1893 the United States was attacked, and
in this explosion the speed of travel from East to West
was more rapid than ever before. 4

In ordinary circumstances, in places where the public
water supply is good and under scientific control, chol-
era is not to be feared. But the great and radical
changes of modern times bring about rapid reverses of
conditions} such, for example, as the sudden pouring
in the year 1920 of hundreds of thousands of disease-
sodden refugees out of Russia into Western Europe.

Without fear of the charge of alarmism, interna-
tional Public Health officers today question whether
they can be sure that local controls will always with-
stand unheralded attacks in force. With that question in

2 Cf. Philippine Journal of Science, 1914, Dr. Victor G. Reiser.

8 A Memoranda on the Epidemiology of Cholera, Major A. J. Rus-
sell, Director of Public Health in Madras Presidency, League of Na-
tions, 1925, which see, for the whole topic.

* Recent Research on the Etiology of Cholera, E. D. W. Grieg,
in The Edinburgh Medical Journal, July, 19191

[370]

Photo by Harry Hubert Field

THE VILLAGE TANK

(See page 366.)

THE WORLD-MENACE

mind, they regard India's cholera as a national prob-
lem of intense international import.

In estimating the safety of the United States from
infection, the element of "carriers" must be considered.
Each epidemic produces a crop of "carriers" whose
power to spread the disease lasts from one hundred and
one days to permanency. 5 Moreover, the existence of
healthy carriers is conclusively proved. And India is
scarcely a month removed from New York or San
Francisco.

"Whenever India's real condition becomes known,"
said an American Public Health expert now in inter-
national service, "all the civilized countries of the
world will turn to the League of Nations and demand
protection against her."

Bengal, one of the worst cholera areas, is about the
size of Nebraska. It has a village population of over
43>5OO,OOO persons, living in 84,981 villages. In the
year 1921, a mild cholera year, the disease was reported
from 11,592 of these villages, spread over 26 districts,
the reported deaths totaling 80,547.* Imagine the task
of trying to inoculate 43,500,000 persons, scattered
over such an area, in advance of the hour of needj
bearing always in mind the fact that the virtue of a
cholera preventive inoculation lasts only ninety days.
Imagine also the task of disinfecting all these village

8 E. D. W. Grieg in Indian Journal of Medical Research, 1913,
Vol. I, pp. 59-64.

Statistical Abstract for British India, J9*4~*5 *o *)23?4> PP- a
and 382; and 54th Annual Report of the Director of Public Health
of Bengal, Appendix I, p. xxviii.

[371]

MOTHER INDIA

wells, when first you must persuade, not compel, the
incredulous, always fatalistic and often resisting people
to permit the process.

In the winter of 1924-5 sporadic cases of cholera ap-
peared in the Indian state of Kashmir. The British
authorities did what they could to induce those of
Kashmir to act, but the latter, Indian fashion, could
see no point in disturbing themselves about ills yet
only in bud. Consequently, in April, came an explo-
sion, killing in a single month 2 per cent, of the entire
population of the State. Across the border of British
India, in the Punjab, the hasty Indianization of the
Public Health Service had already so far proceeded
that only one British officer remained in the depart-
ment. Result: for the first time in thirty years the
deadly scourge overflowed the Kashmir border and
reaped a giant harvest among the Punjabi peasantry.

In the normal course of events, however, the main
danger source for widespread cholera epidemics is the
periodic concentration of great masses of people in fairs
and festivals and in pilgrimages to holy cities. Dur-
ing the past twelve years or more, the British sanitary
control of the crowds, in transit and also in concen-
tration, where temporary latrines are built, pipe-lines
for water laid, wells chlorinated and doctors and guards
stationed, has been so efficient as greatly to lessen the
risks. Of the possibilities of the future the Kashmiri
incident speaks.

Hookworm, an intestinal parasite, saps its victim's
vitality, eventually reducing him, body and mind, to a

[372]

THE WORLD-MENACE

useless rag not worth his keep to himself or any om
else. Hookworm is contracted by walking with bare
feet on ground contaminated with the fasces of per-
sons infected. The procedure against hookworm is
(a) to have the people use proper latrines, and (b) to
have them wear shoes.

As Mr. Gandhi has shown, Hindus, anywhere, dis-
pense with latrines, but are not, beyond that, always
greatly concerned as to what they use. In one town I
found from the municipal chairman that latrines had
been built obediently to the Health Officer's specifica-
tions and desirej but the people, he said, were leaving
them strictly alone, preferring to do as they had always
done, using roads, alleys, gutters and their own floors.

This was in part because the town was short of out-
castes and therefore had no one to remove night-soil
a thing which no caste man would do though he smoth-
ered in his own dirt 5 and in part because it was easier
so to observe the Hindu religious ritual prescribed for
the occasion concerned. 7 Villagers, in any case, always
use the open fields immediately surrounding their vil-
lage, fields over which they continually walk.

To sum up in the words of Doctor Adiseshan, In-
dian, Assistant Director of Public Health of Madras:
"How are you to prevent hookworm when people will
not use latrines, and when no orthodox Hindu, and
certainly no woman, will consent to wear shoes?"

Under such circumstances it appears that, although
jhe cure for hookworm is well established, absolute,

* See Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, pp.

[3731

MOTHER INDIA

simple and cheap, it would be an indefensible waste of
public monies to administer that cure to patients sure
to be immediately re-infected.

It is estimated that over 80 per cent, of the people
of Madras and 60 per cent, of those of Bengal, harbor
hookworms. And in this connection Dr. Andrew Bal-
four makes an interesting calculation 1 . As to India, he
says: 8

A conservative estimate shows that 45,000,000 wage-
earners in that country are infected with hookworm. In 1915
the Statistical Department calculated the average wage of an
able-bodied agricultural labourer in Bengal at IO rupees
monthly. . . . Assuming that the average yearly wage of the
45,000,000 infected labourers is IOO rupees each, these men
are at present earning Rs. 4,500,000,000 annually. Now the
managers of tea estates in the Darjeeling district estimate that
the Rockefeller anti-hookworm campaign there . , . has in-
creased the labour efficiency of the coolies from 25 to 50 pe*
cent.

Suppose that in India generally only 10 per cent, in-
creased efficiency is achieved. Even so the Rs. 4,500,000,000
[$1,500,000,000] become Rs. 4,950,000,000 [$1,650,-
000,000].

Bubonic plague was first introduced into India in
1896, coming from China. Today India is the world's
chief reservoir of infection, 9 and has lost, since 1896,
some 1 1 ,000,000 lives bv that cause alone. The case

8 Health Problems of the Empire, pp. 193-4.

9 Prevalence of Epidemic Disease in the Far East, Dr. F. Normaa
White, p. 21.

[374]

THE WORLD-MENACE

mortality is about 70 per cent. Of pneumonic plague,
which sometimes develops in conjunction with the
other form, only an occasional case survives.

Plague uncontrolled at its source may at any time
become an international scourge, a danger to which
international health officers are the more alive since
latter-day observations continue to show the disease
breaking out in regions where its occurrence has been
unknown before.

Plague, unlike cholera, is not communicated by man
to man, but to man by fleas from the bodies of sick
rats. The flea bites the man and leaves a poisonous
substance around the bite. Man, scratching the bite,
scratches the poison into his skin and the deed is done.
When plague breaks out in a village, the effective pro-
cedure is to evacuate the village at once and to inocu-
late the villagers with plague vaccine.

In most countries you simultaneously proceed to real
control by killing the rats. But this, in a Hindu land,
you cannot effectively do, because of the religion.

The constant obstacle in the Public Health Officer's
path is, characteristically, a negative one the utter
apathy of the Indian peoples, based on their fatalistic
creed. The intermittent obstacle, acute of latter years,
is the political agent who runs here and there among
the villages, whispering that an evil Government is
bent on working harm. To such a pitch have these per-
sons from time to time wrought their victims, that the
latter have murdered the native health agent entrusted
with the task of getting them out of an infected site,

[375]

MOTHER INDIA

With repeated examples, however, of the results of
following Government's behests, a degree of improve-
ment has taken place. In some parts where plague has
struck often, the people have begun to evacuate of
themselves, when rats begin to die, and to flock into
the nearest dispensary begging for inoculation. But in
general the darkness of their minds is still so deep that
the agitator can easily excite them to resistance, even
to violence, by some tale of wickedness afoot.

When the first Indian lady of the district can say
to the English lady doctor brought to her bedside:
"Why should I show you my tongue when the pain is
so much lower down? And besides, if I open my
mouth like that a lot more devils will jump in"} or
when the chief landlord of the district will tie a great
ape just beyond claw-reach of his ten-day-old son and
then torment the ape to fury to make it snatch and
snarl at the child, to frighten away the demon that is
giving him convulsions, what is to be expected of the
little folk squatting by the tank?

In the winter of 1926 I went through a plague-
infested district in company with a British Public
Health officer on tour. The first village that we visited
was a prosperous settlement of grain-dealers shop-
keepers and money-lenders the market town for the
surrounding farmers. Each house was stored with
grain in jars and bins, and rats swarmed. The rats had
begun to die. Then two men had died. And on that the
British District Commissioner had ordered the people
out.

Now they were all gathered in a little temporary

[376]

THE WORLD-MENACE

"straw village" a few hundred yards beyond their
town gate, there to await spring and the end of the
scourge. As the doctor, a Scotchman thirty years in
the Indian Medical Service, approached the encamp-
ment, the whole lot, men, women and children, rushed
forward to greet him and then to ask advice:

"Sahib, if we build fires here to cook our food, and
the wind comes, it will blow sparks and burn these
straw houses we have made. What, then, shall we do
to cook our food? Please arrange."

"Build your fires over yonder, behind that mound."

"Ah, yes, Sahib, to be sure."

"Sahib, if while we sit here, outside our gates, bad
folk creep into our houses and steal our grain, what
then?"

"Even so, is it not better that bad men die of the
plague than that the plague kills you? Also, you may
set watchmen at a distance."

"The Sahib is wise. Further: there is, in a tent near
by, a stranger of no merit who wishes to push medi-
cine into our skins. Is it good medicine? Shall we listen
to him? And what is the right price?"

"The man in the tent is sent by Government. The
medicine is necessary to all who wish to live. It is free
medicine. There is no price."

A pause, while the people exchange glances. Then
the headman speaks:

"It is well, indeed, that the Sahib came."

"It looks," says the doctor, as we move on, "as if
my little dispenser fellow had been squeezing those
people for money before inoculating them. They

[3771

MOTHER INDIA

do that! And then, if the people won't satisfy them,
they report that inoculation is refused. Except in the
case of soldiers and police, we have no authority to
compel inoculation. It is a risky business, this fighting
wholesale death with broken reeds!"

Later we find the "stranger of no merit" squatting
in his tent, a traveling dispenser of the Public Health
Department trained and charged to do minor surgery,
well disinfection and plague inoculation, to give simple
medicines for simple ailments, to lecture, and to show
lantern slides on health propaganda. By his own show-
ing he had sat in this tent for a month.

"I call the people every day to be inoculated, but
they refuse to come forward," he complained.
" 'Plague-doctor/ they say, 'now that you are here
the plague must come!' and they laugh at me. They
are a backward and an ignorant people."

The doctor inspects his equipment. On the inner lid
of his plague box the dosage is written. Within are
the serum tubes, the needles, the disinfectant equip-
ment, undisturbed. Also his medicine chest "Dys-
pepsia Powders," "Country Medicines," simple drugs
in tablets.

"Let me see your instruments," says the doctor. All
are rusty, several are broken and useless.

"You should have sent those in, each one as soon
as you broke it. You know it would have been replaced
at once," says the doctor, patiently. "Now you have
nothing to work with."

"Ah, yes, I meant to send them. I forgot."

[378]

Chapter XXVIII
"QUACKS WHOM WE KNOW"

"It is better to sit than to walk, to lie down than to
sit, to sleep than to wake, and death is the best of all,"
says the Brahman proverb.

Taking into consideration the points with which the
preceding chapter is concerned, the question naturally
arises as to how the Indian is affected by his own pe-
culiar sanitary habits. That question may be answered
in the words of an American scientist now studying in
the country:

"From long consumption of diluted sewage they
have actually acquired a degree of immunity. Yet all
of them are walking menageries of intestinal parasites,
which make a heavy drain upon their systems and
which inevitably tell when some infection, such as
pneumonia or influenza, comes along. Then the people
die like flies. They have no resistance."

These conditions, added to infant marriage, sexual
recklessness and venereal infections, further let down
the bars to physical and mental miseries} and here
again one is driven to speculate as to how peoples so
living and so bred can have continued to exist.

A reply is thus couched by one of the most eminent
of European International Public Health authorities:

"It is a question of adaptation, and of the evolution

[3791

MOTHER INDIA

of a sub-grade of existence on which they now sur-
vive. The British are to blame for the world-threat
that they constitute. If the British had not protected
them, the virile races of the north would have wiped
them out."

The superior virility of the northern races includ-
ing the Sikhs, and more especially the Pathans and
other Muhammadan stocks is favored by their supe-
rior diet. These hardy out-door folk are all large meat-
eaters, and consume much milk and grain. The diet of
the southern Hindu has little in it to build or repair
tissue. He subsists mainly on sweets and carbo-hydrates,
and, to the degree that he is able, he leads a sedentary
life. Diabetes is often the incident that brings to its
early close the career of the southern Indian public
man. 1

Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher, I.M.S., Director of
the Central Research Institute of the Government of
India, in a paper called "What Disease Costs India,"
has said: 2

The deaths in India annually number about 7,000,000,
i.e, very nearly the population of greater London. . . . Now
all men must die, but it is to be hoped that each will have a
run for his money. . . . During the first year of life, the
[Indian's] expectation of life is ... about twenty-three
years. At the age of five it is thirty-five years, the highest
expectation at any age."

1 For an extended exposition of this subject sec The Protein
ntent in Nutrition, Major D. Me Cay, I.M.S., London, Edward Arnold
1912.

2 Indian Medical Gazette, April, 1924, pp. 196-200,

[380]

"QUACKS WHOM WE KNOW"

And Colonel Christopher further points out that so
heavy a mortality inevitably indicates a background of
widespread and continuous sickness, of reduced pro-
ductivity, of enhanced costs of administration, and of
penalized trade, whose combined tax upon the re-
sources of the country, though difficult to calculate,
cannot but be an enormous moral and economic burden
to support, a heavy drag upon prosperity.

For this great field of need the lack of means is
always conspicuous. For 1925-26, some of the provin-
cial budgets showed the following items: 8

Education Public Health

Bombay Presidency .... $6,959,700. $ 964,700.
Madras Presidency .... 6,211,100. 1,054,500.

United Provinces 5>7I3 5 OOO. 493,700'.

Bengal 4,322,000. 88o>coo.

The open road to better conditions is clear, and, alas,
untrodden. One finger-post reads thus: 4

The necessary preliminary to any satisfactory advance . . .
is the growth among the educated classes of a missionary and
humanitarian spirit which will lead them to consecrate time,
money and energy to the task of ameliorating the conditions
in which their less fortunate brethren live. . . . India can
never be safeguarded from a disastrous death rate, punctuated
by heavy epidemics, until her people can be weaned from their
tenacious adherence to social observances which are as dia-
metrically opposed to public health as they are to economic
prosperity.

8 Indian Year-Book, 1926, pp. 89, 07, 107, 118.
4 Statement Exhibiting the Moral and Material Progress . . . /
India During the Years 1923-24, London, 1924, pp. 211-12.

MOTHER INDIA

But that humanitarian spirit does not today exist.

Curiously lucid contributions on this line come from
Mr. Gandhi j speaking as of Hindu medical men, he
says: *

It is worth considering why we take up the profession of
medicine. It is certainly not taken up for the purpose of serv-
ing humanity. We become doctors so that we may obtain
honours and riches.

After which he affirms:

European doctors are the worst of all.

Amplifying his accusation, Mr. Gandhi continues:

These [European] doctors violate our religious instinct.
Most of their medical preparations contain either animal fat
or spirituous liquors; both of these are tabooed by Hindu and
Mahomedans.

And again, more specifically:

1 overeat, I have indigestion, I go to a doctor, he gives me
medicine. I am cured, I overeat again, and I take his pills
again. Had I not taken the pills in the first instance, I would
have suffered the punishment deserved by me, and I would
not have overeaten again. ... A continuance of a course
of medicine must, therefore, result in loss of control over the
.mind.

"In these circumstances," he concludes, "we are unfit
to serve the country." And therefore "to study Euro-
pean medicine is to deepen our slavery."

5 Mr. Gandhi's statements quoted in this chapter will be found in
feis Indian Home Rule, Ganesh & Co., Madras, 1924, pp. 61-2,

[382!

"QUACKS WHOM WE KNOW"

Whatever may be thought of Mr. Gandhi's judg-
ment, his sincerity is not questioned. Holding such an
opinion of the motives and value of western medical
men in India, it is scarcely surprising that, in the period
of his "non-cooperation" campaign against Govern-
ment and all its works, not excepting its educational
efforts, he should have exhorted medical and public
health btudents to desert their classes and to boycott
their schools.

Boy-fashion, they did it for a time and at what a
cost to India!

The other side of this phase of Indian nationalism
is its enthusiasm for the Aruvedic or ancient Hindu
system of medicine under which a large part of the
native population is today being treated, more particu-
larly in Bengal and in central and southern India.

This system is held to have been handed down from
the gods in earliest times, and to be of spiritual and
inspired nature. Some hint of its quality may be gath-
ered from an excerpt from the Sushruta Samhita, one
of the two venerable works on which the system is
based.*

The favourable or unfavourable termination of a disease
may be predicted from the appearance, speech, dress and de-
meanour of the messenger sent to call a physician, or from
the nature of the asterism and the lunar phase marking the
time of the arrival, or from the direction of the wind blow-
ing at the time, or from the nature of omens seen by him on
the road, or from the posture or speech of the physician him-
* Translation of Kaviraj Kunja Lai Bishagratna, p. 270,

[383]

MOTHER INDIA

self. A messenger belonging to the same caste as the patient
himself should be regarded as an auspicious omen, whereas one
from a different caste would indicate a fatal or an unfavouiv
able termination of the disease.

Several works on modern Aruvedic practice have
been published. These make the claim that the Sush-
ruta anatomy and surgery of two thousand years ago
were far superior to those of modern western science,
and deduce that as Aruvedic methods have undergone
no serious change since that time, they must be prac-
tically perfect. Says Sir Patrick Hehir: T

One of the principles of the system is that diseases are the
result of the operations of evil spirits who have to be pacified
by various offerings and propitiated by incantations. Regard-
ing the diseases of children it is stated 8 that these "are due to
the action of certain spirits who were belated in obtaining
lucrative posts in the retinue of the Destroyer and were com-
pelled, to secure power, to tax sorrowing parents, who might
have committed any of the hundred-odd ritual faults by af-
flicting their offspring." One searches in vain for anything
approaching definite and rational therapeutics in this system.
We have [here] in a modern Aruvedic work a complex com-
bination of drugs extolled as being able to cure such diverse
conditions as obesity and gonorrhea, and another extensive
combination alleged to effect a cure in all diseases of women
however caused.

7 The Medical Profession in India, Major-General Sir Patrick
Hehir, I.M.S., Henry Frowde *nd Rodder and S tough ton, London,
1923. p. 104.

Quoted from Kavira} Nagcndra Nith Sen Gupta,
Syttem of Medicine, 3 vc. .,.. Calcutta 1909*

[384!

"QUACKS WHOM WE KNOW"

My personal enquiry into Aruvedic surgical cases
Was limited to two instances. The first was that of a
little boy who walked into a Madras Presidency hos-
pital one day in 1925, carrying his own forearm as a
parcel, with a request to the British surgeon in charge^
from a well-known Aruvedic doctor, to sew the fore-
arm in place.

The history of this case was that the arm had sus-
tained a compound fracture, the bone sticking through
the flesh in an open wound. The Aruvedic doctor had
first applied cow-dung to the open wound and then
had clapped on splints, which he bound tight with
strips of freshly-peeled tree-bark. The weather being
hot and dry, the bark had contracted rapidly and pro-
duced extreme pressure. The circulation stopped, dry
gangrene set in and the arm sloughed off at the elbow.
Seeing which, the Aruvedic man thought it time to in-
voke the courtesies of the profession and to suggest the
western needle.

The second case occurred in 1926, in the same prov-
ince. An Aruvedic doctor attempted to operate accord-
ing to his code upon a man having an enlarged gland
in the groin. Holding his patient down, and without an
anaesthetic, he opened the gland. As the knife went in,
the patient jumped, an artery was cut and the peri-
toneal cavity slit open. The doctor, knowing no anat-
omy, then took his patient to a near-by government dis-
pensary. But there the little dispensary manij
an Indian, out of sheer terror pushed

"I am not meant for this sort of

MOTHER INDIA

tested. "I am only meant for minor surgery. Take the
man on to a hospital."

But before reaching the hospital the man died.

Action for manslaughter was brought by the police
against the Aruvedic physician. But an association of
Indian doctors holding western degrees, many of whom
were in Government employ, defended his case and
paid the expenses. "Our fine old Indian system must
not be attacked," they said. Their lawyers first got the
defendant off on a technicality; and then secured the
prosecution of the little dispensary man for criminal
delay.

The common arguments in favor of the old system
are that it is cheaper for the people, that it particu-
larly suits Indian constitutions and that it is of divine
sanction and birth. Leaving the last tenet aside, as not
in the field of discussion, we find that the cost of run-
ning an Aruvedic dispensary is much the same as that
of running a dispensary on western lines; 9 and that no
material difference has ever been discovered between
white man and brown, in the matter of reaction of
medicines upon the system.

The Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms, however, have
occasioned a great recrudescence of native medicine.
Provincial ministers dependent on popular vote are
prone to favor spending public money to erect Aru-
vedic and Unani l colleges, hospitals and dispensaries.
With the Indian National Congress claiming that Aru-

f The Medical Profession in India, p. n6u
10 The ancient Arabic school of medicine.

[386!

"QUACKS WHOM WE KNOW"

vedic medicine is "just as scientific as modern western
medicine," with such men as Sir Rabindranath Tagore,
the poet, fervently declaring that Aruvedic science
surpasses anything the West can offer} and with
Swarajists in general pushing it forward on patriotic
grounds, you get the melancholy spectacle of the
meager appropriations allotted to medicine and public
health, in this most disease-stricken of lands, being
heavily cut into to perpetuate a "science" on the same
level as the "voodoo doctoring" of the West Indian
negro.

That the old native systems still exert a strong hold
on the imaginations of the masses cannot be questioned.
Also, like the voodoo doctors, they teach the use of a
few good herbs. These two points enable their practi-
tioners to induce enough "cures" to keep their prestige
alive.

But once upon a time it chanced that Mr. Gandhi,
having widely and publicly announced that "hospitals
are institutions for propagating sin"} 1X that "Euro-
pean doctors are the worst of all," and that "quacks
whom we know are better than the doctors who put on
an air of humaneness," 12 himself fell suddenly ill of
a pain in the side.

As he happened to be in prison at the time, a British
surgeon of the Indian Medical Service came straight-
way to see him.

"Mr. Gandhi," said the surgeon, as the incident was

11 Indian Home Rule, p. 61.

p. 62.

[3871

MOTHER INDIA

reported, <C I am sorry to have to tell you that you have
appendicitis. If you were my patient, I should operate
at once. But you will probably prefer to call in your
Aruvedic physician."

Mr. Gandhi proved otherwise minded.

"I should prefer not to operate," pursued the sur-
geon, "because in case the outcome should be unfortu-
nate, all your friends will lay it as a charge of mali-
cious intent against us whose duty it is to care for you."

"If you will only consent to operate," pleaded Mr.
Gandhi, "I will call in my friends, now, and explain
to them that you do so at my request."

So, Mr. Gandhi willfully went to an "institution for
propagating sin"j was operated upon by one of the
"worst of all," an officer of the Indian Medical Service,
and was attentively nursed through convalescence by an
English Sister whom he is understood to have thought
after all rather a useful sort of person.

[3881

Chapter XXIX

PSYCHOLOGICAL GLIMPSES THROUGH
THE ECONOMIC LENS

The welfare of any people, we are wont to agree,
must finally rest upon economic foundations. In the
foregoing pages certain aspects of economic conditions
in India have been indicated. To these indications I
should like now to add a few more, disclaiming any
pretense that they constitute a survey, and offering
them merely for what they are worth as scattering
observations made in the living field, entirely non-
political both in character and in purpose.

The Indian, aside from his grievances earlier de-
scribed, has other explanations of what he calls his
depressed status, in large part covering them with the
elastic title of "economic drains" upon the country.
Compared with the matters already handled, these con-
siderations seem superficial, serving mainly to befog
the issue. The principal drains, as they appear to me,
have been shown in the- body of this book. But the
Indian native politician's category comprises none of
them. He speaks, instead, under such headings as cot-
ton, tea, interest on Government bonds, export of grain,
army maintenance, and the pay of British Civil Serv-
ants in India.

The attempt carefully to examine these or any com-

MOTHER INDIA

parable point with the Indian intelligentsia is likely to
end in disappointment and a web of dialectics f or the
reason that, as the question grows close, the Indian, as
a rule, simply drops it and shifts to another ground
where, for the moment, he has more elbow-room. To
touch briefly on the items just enumerated will, how-
ever, illustrate his mode of thought.

Of cotton, his persistent statement is that the coun-
try's raw crop, selfishly cornered, is sent to England to
give employment to Lancashire spinners, and then,
brought back as cloth, is forced upon Indian purchasers.

The facts are: (a) The English market stands sixth
on the list of purchasers of the Indian cotton crop. 1
(b) Indian cotton, being of poor quality, irregular,
short of staple and persistently tampered with, to make
weight, does not meet the requirements of English
cotton cloth manufacturers, (c) The cotton for the
looms of Lancashire is supplied from America and the
Sudan, (d) The little Indian cotton used in the United
Kingdom goes chiefly to making lamp-wicks, cleaning
cloths and other low-grade fabrics.

As affecting the present status of India's cotton im-
port trade, two mutually countervailing influences must
be mentioned: On the one hand stands the recent han-
dling by Government of the old excise duty on Indian-
milled cotton goods an imposition which no Briton
today defends; that excise duty is now wiped out, and
its disappearance would naturally serve to diminish
importations and to stimulate sales of home manufac-

*See Appendix IIUL

[3901

GLIMPSES THROUGH THE ECONOMIC LENS

ture. On the other hand stand the facts that the people
of India acquire, year by year, :i little more money to
spend and a little more habit of spending it} that they
like fine cloths j and that the cloth from Indian mills
is mostly coarse. Therefore, in spite of free markets, in
spite of Japan's growing competition in fine goods, in
spite of Mr. Gandhi's cottage spinning campaign and
its rough product, India still chooses to indulge in a
considerable amount of Lancashire's sheer fabrics.

Government, meantime, has been sparing no pains to
improve the quality of the cotton crop. In the endeavor
to induce the growers to put more intelligence into the
work, experimental farms and model stations have been
established in the cotton areas, inspectional teaching has
been set up, and improved implements 2 and good seed *
provided, with an active propaganda as to the feasi-
bility of higher prices.

"India is actually a better cotton country than is the
United States," an American authority has said, "but
the people v/ill not put their backs into the work, and
the Swaraj politician does what he can to discourage
improved production, on the ground that c lndia must
not help England by growing cotton that Lancashire
Will use.' "

Whether unaware or regardless of the facts just re-
counted, the foremost of Indian politicians repeatedly
assured me that "England takes our raw cotton away tc
give work to her own unemployed, brings the cloth back

2 O/iginally imported from America, but now made by Indian labor
Jh the Government agricultural stations.
* From American stock.

[35*1

MOTHER INDIA

here and foists it upon us. So all the profit is hers and
India is robbed. No country can stand such a drain."

"But America raises cotton, some of which England
buys,, makes into cloth and sells to America again. We
gladly (sell to our best bidders, and we buy where we
find what we want. Also, we make some cloth ourselves.
Whete is the difference," I asked, "between your case
and America's?"

"But consider the question of tea," replies the Indian
economist quickly. "We raise great crops of tea, and
almost the whole is swept out of India another ex-
hausting drain upon the country."

"Do you sell your tea, or give it away?"

"Ah, yes but the tea y you perceive, is gone."

The third "drain" upon the country, as named above,
is the interest upon Government's Public Utility bonds,
paid to London. The caliber of the complaint may
briefly be shown through the single instance of rail-
ways.

The first line of railway in India was finished in
1853. At the end of March, 1924, India had a total
length of 38,039 miles of open system, 4 which in 1925
carried over four and a half times as many passengers
per mile of steel as did the railways of the United
States.

Taking the respective viewpoints of Americans and
of Indians in the matter now in hand, we get further
light on the Indian economist. When America built her
railways, she had not sufficient means to do so without

4 Statistical Abstract, p. 413. See also Appendix IIIB.

139*1

GLIMPSES THROUGH THE ECONOMIC LENS

borrowing. Consequently she borrowed from Europe,
largely from Great Britain, about half the money that
built her railway system, well content to pay what k
cost in view of benefits expected from the opening of
the country. These costs, in the normal course, con*
tinued until about 1914. When India built her rail-
ways, she also failed to find the money at home} yet
in her case not because money was lacking, but because
Indian capitalists would lend only at huge rates of in-
terest. Consequently India borrowed from her cheapest
market, London, practically all the money that built
her railways, paying from 2.5 to 5 per cent., with an
average of 3.5 per cent, on the loans the lowest rates
that the world knows.

It is the payment of the annual interest on these
loans that the Indian critic is constantly describing as
an insupportable grievance, "a drain" of the country's
resources.

But the net profits to the Government of India
brought in by the railways after payment of interest,
sinking funds, annuity charges, etc., were, in 1924-25,

Mr. Gandhi's views on railways, being a conspicuous
feature of his anti-British propaganda, may be noticed
here:*

Good travels at a snail's pace it can, therefore, have
little to do with the railways. Those who want to do good
... are not in a hurry. . . . But evil has wings. . . . So

Statesman's Year Book, 1926, p. 139.

* Ijtdian Home Rule, pp. 45-8.

[393]

MOTHER INDIA

the railways can become a distributing agency for the evil one
only. It may be a debatable matter whether railways spread
famines, but it is beyond dispute that they propagate evil. . . .
God set a limit to man's locomotive ambition in the construc-
tion of his body. Man immediately proceeded to discover
means of over-riding the limit. . . . Railways are a most
dangerous institution.

Yet Mr. Gandhi himself sets the example of braving
that danger, in his many political tours about the coun-
try. And, despite his doubts on the point, one effect of
the existence of the railroads has certainly been to wipe
out the mortal terror of famine in India. Whereas in
the old days that threat hung always over the land,
waiting only the failure of a monsoon to reap its hu-
man harvest, deaths from this cause are now almost
unknown} because Government's systematized famine
scheme is sustained by means to transport (a) men
from famine areas to areas where labor is wanted, and
(b) food and fodder whence both exist in plenty to
places where, to save life, both are needed.

Beyond the railheads runs the British -built network
of good highroads, speeding motor traffic where bul-
lock carts alone used to creep and wallow,

"And every time I think of famine and the desperate
work and the wholesale death it used to mean," said
one old Deputy District Commissioner, "I say, *God
bless Henry Ford!'"

It is scarcely necessary to point out the further prac-
tical uses of the railways, whether in equalization of
prices, in opening of markets, or in development of

[3943

GLIMPSES THROUGH THE ECONOMIC LENS

t/ade with its consequent increase of individual pros*
perity and of Government revenues.

Turning now to the fourth item listed for consid-
eration, one finds Mr. Gandhi and other Indian critics
pointing to the exportation of grain from a country
where many regions are from time to time short of
food, as an intolerable "drain" due to administrative
ill will, greed, or mismanagement. However elabo-
rately this idea is clothed, its bare bones tell a plain
story.

No man sells grain today that he needs today to put
into his mouth. If he sells grain, it is to get something
that he holds more necessary or more desirable. Gov-
ernment, in the last thirty years, has created great areas
of rich grain land where only desert existed before.
Millions of Indians are raising on these lands quanti-
ties of grain far beyond their own consuming power or
that of the regions in which they live. Roads, railways,
and ships have brought the markets of the world to
their doors. They sell to the highest bidder. If Gov-
ernment should clap an export duty on their produce
to keep it at home, what shame would then be cried
upon the despot whose jealous grip denied to labor the
fruit of its toil! Grain travels to and from India as it
does everywhere else in obedience to the currents of
-tforld trade.

For our fifth point: The cost of the army is always
alleged to be monstrous in proportion to the country's
. "The army is too big," says the politician.
[3951

MOTHER INDIA

"Is it too big for the work it has to do in keeping
your safety and peace ?"

"I don't know. I have not looked into that," is the
usual reply. "But anyway, it costs an outrageous per-
centage of India's revenue."

In presenting this view of the subject it is the cus-
tom to speak as of the Indian central budget only,
which gives a figure of expenditure on defense amount-
ing to about 59 per cent, of the total. To arrive at a
just statement, the provincial budgets, which are en-
tirely free from defense items, must be reckoned in;
it is then found that the proportion of governmental
revenues assigned to defense is about 30 per cent. 7

The Indian peoples are taxed about $.58 per capita
for the defense of their country. 8

The people of Great Britain pay about $13 per capita
on that count, the people of America about $5; those
of Japan pay for defense six times as much as the
people of India, implying a per capita tax on that score
of over $3.5O. 9

India possesses 1,400 miles of constantly dangerous
frontier, always actively threatened, and three times in
the last century ablaze with open war. She also has an
enormous and extremely vulnerable coast line, which
without extra cost to her is defended by the British
fleet. And finally, she has a population which, time
and again, in its sudden outbursts of internecine fury,

T Defence of India, "Arthur Vincent/' Humphrey Milf ord, Oxford
University Press, 1922, p. 94.

India in 1924-25, p. 31.

The Statesman's Year Book, 1926, p. xix.

[396]

GLIMPSES THROUGH THE ECONOMIC LENS

needs protection against itself. Taxes are light because
the people are poor. Revenues are small because taxes
are light. Costs of national defense look large because
revenues are small. The maintenance of order and
peace is the prime duty of Government. On that duty
any Government must spend what it must. If the total
revenue be small, the less is left for other activities.
The obvious solution is to increase the revenue. 10

But the great weakness in the Indian's reasoning that
the costs of the army constitute a "drain" out of India
of India's wealth lies in the fact that practically all the
pay of the Army stays in India. The pay of the great
body of troops, which is Indian, naturally does so.
That part of British soldiers' pay that goes home to
Britain is scarcely large enough to waste words upon.
British Army officers in India in practically all cases are
spending their private means there, over and above
their pay. Equipment and stores, by order, are bought
in India whenever Indian firms can provide them in
suitable quality and at a reasonable competitive price.
Otherwise they are bought abroad, by the High Com-
missioner for India stationed in London, who is him-
self an Indian. In this matter of governmental pur-
chase of stores, in whatever department, a frequent
disparity exists between the actual records and the
statements of the Indian politicians who, as my own
research proved, are wont to suit their allegations to
their convenience rather than to the facts.

The sixth conspicuous channel of "drain" upon the

*> Sec Appendix III C

[3971

MOTHER INDIA

country's resources is the pay of the British members
of the Indian Civil Service. Here the relevant facts are
that in the beginning it was necessary to offer good pay
to get good men to take on the job} and that, with all
the upward rush of prices in the last quarter century,
no comparable increase has taken place in that pay.
India, today, is a costly place to live in, as any sojourner
will find. She is not a white man's country, in the sense
that she frequently robs him of his health if not of his
life. In committing himself to her service he must re-
sign all home associations and privileges for long pe-
riods of time. If he marries he must part early with his
children, and maintain them separated from their par-
ents by a journey three weeks long. When he retires,
after twenty-five to thirty-five years of active service,
his pension of 1,000 per annum loses 25 per cent, by
taxes; and, last but not least, the salaries paid to all
but the few highest officials are large only from the
point of view of the Indian, with his greatly differing
standard of living which few white men would accept.
The married British Civil Servant in India, if he has
children to educate and no private resources on which
to draw, must live with watchful economy to make
both ends meet. And he can save little or nothing for
a rainy day.

Nevertheless, the unhappy peoples of India, says
Sir M. Visvesvaraya, 11 speaking as does many another
prominent Indian, "have not only to feed and clothe

11 Reconstructing India f p. 7.

[398]

GLIMPSES THROUGH THE ECONOMIC LENS

themselves, but also to support one of the costliest ad-
ministrations in the world."

To dissect this statement were, after one glance at
the Tax Table, a waste of time. "One of the costliest
administrations in the world" cannot be supported from
such resources. Including land revenue, which is prop-
erly to be listed as rental rather than taxation, the total
per capita tax paid by the inhabitants of British India
in 1923-24 was five and a half rupees 12 or nearly
$1.82 in United States currency at the then rate of
exchange. The per capita taxation in the Philippines
for the year 1923, as shown in the Annual Report of
the Insular Auditor, was $3.50.

Even such a sum may seem large, in comparison with
the general poverty of the Indian people. Costs of
Government reduced to the irreducible are still high
to a pauper. But observers are not wanting who believe
that among the causes of India's poverty is this very
lightness of taxation, which deprives the Administra-
tion of means with which to work.

Now, leaving matters of argument, let us face about
and look at indisputable wastages of India's vital re-
sources. The major channels have been shown in earlier
pages, but these leave untouched a list of points only
second in importance, such as caste marriage costs, the
usurer, the hoarding of treasure, and mendicancy.

Caste laws strictly limit the range of possible mar-
riages, sometimes even to the confines of half-a-dozen

i* Statistical Abstract, 1914-15 to 1923-24. p. iga

[399]

MOTHER INDIA

families, so that, despite his dread of sonlessness, a
man may be forced to wait till he is old for the birth
of a girl within the circle wherein he may marry, 11 and
then may be forced to pay ruinously to secure her. Or
again, there is such a scramble for husbands of right
caste that, rather than sacrifice their own souls by leav-
ing a girl unmarried, fathers strain their credit to the
snapping point to secure eligible matches for their
daughters.

In Bengal, of late years, several cases have become
public of girls committing suicide at the approach of
puberty, to save their fathers the crushing burden of
their marriage dowry. 14 And the chorus of praise
evoked from Bengal youth by this act has stimulated
further self-immolations. Nor do the father's finances
greatly affect the case. Though a man prosper and take
in much money, marriages in his family still pull him
down to ruin, for the reason that pride and custom for-
ever urge him ahead of his means.

Marriage expenses and funeral expenses, love of liti-
gation, thriftlessness and crop failures are among the
chief roads that lead the Indian into debt. The Indian
money-lender, or bania> is the same man as the usurer
of the Philippines. And, exactly as in the Philippines,
the average Indian having a little money laid by, even
though he be not a bania by caste and calling, will, if
he be minded to lend, lend to his neighbors at 33 per
cent, and up, rather than to Government at a miserable

11 Reconstructing India, Visvesvaraya, p. 241.

14 Legislative Assembly Debates, 1922, VoL II, Part II, p. i8n.

[4001

GLIMPSES THROUGH THE ECONOMIC LENS

3.5 per cent, so that Government may build him a rail-
way. Let the silly folk in London do that.

The bania is the man who, foreseeing a short crop,
corners all the grain in his region, and at sowing-time
sells seed-grain to his neighbors at 200 per cent, profit,
taking the coming crop as security.

Once in debt to a bania y few escape. Clothing, oxen,
and all purchased necessities are bought of the same
wise old spider. Compound interest rolls up in the
good old way as the years pass, and posterity limps
under the load unto the third and fourth generation.

"The assumption that debt is due to poverty cannot
be entertained. Debt is due to credit and credit de-
pends upon prosperity and not poverty," writes Cal-
vert. Credit, in India, is the creation of the British
Government by the establishment of peace and security
of property, coupled with public works that increase
production and the value of land. The bania in his
fullest glory is therefore a by-product of British rule.
In the Punjab, rich among provinces, we find him in
his paradise, 40,000 strong, collecting from the peo-
ple annual interest equaling nearly three times the total
sum that they annually pay to Government. 15

Everywhere, whether openly or covertly, the usurer
opposes the education of the people, because a man who
can read will not sign the sort of paper by which the
bania holds his slave, and a man who can figure
know when his debt is cleared. As two Indian
of the profession warmly told me, the bania

"See Appendix III D.

[40l]

MOTHER INDIA

meddlesome and unsympathetic foreign government
that has introduced a system of cooperative credit,
which, wherever a Briton directs it, is ruining our good
old indigenous banking business. Moreover, not con-
tent even with that mischief, it is pushing in night
schools and adult-education schemes to upset the peo-
ple's mind."

Intimately powerful as he is throughout the coun-
try, the bania exercises a strong undercurrent of influ-
ence in the Swarajist party, making it generally hostile
to labor interests and currency reforms.

A third actual drain upon prosperity, seldom adver*
tised, yet affecting not only India but the rest of the
world, is India's disposition of bullion. Since the early
days of the Roman Empire, western economists have
been troubled over India's intake of precious metals,
rather than of foreign goods, in payment for her
produce. These metals she has always swallowed up. 16

In 1889 it was estimated that India held imprisoned
"a stock of gold bullion wholly useless for commercial
purpose and increasing at the rate of nearly 3 million
sterling [$14,000,000] annually, of the value of not
less than two hundred and seventy million pounds
sterling [ $ i ,3 1 2,000,000] ." 1T This ever-accumulating
treasure lies in the hands of all conditions and orders

i See Appendix III E.

17 The Industrial Competition of Asia. An Inquiry into the Influ-
ence of Currency on the Commerce of the Empire in the East, Qar-
tnont John DanielL Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co., Ltd., Lon-
don, 1890, p. 249-

[402]

GLIMPSES THROUGH THE ECONOMIC LENS

of men, from the poorest laborer to the most eminent
prince.

In 1927, Mr. D. C Bliss, American Trade Commis-
sioner in Bombay, wrote of treasure in India: 18

Vast reserves have been accumulated, . . . estimated as
amounting to more than five billion dollars but they have
been jealously hoarded in the form of unproductive precious
metals. Put to productive uses, or loaned out in the world's
money-markets, they would suffice to make India one of the
powerful nations of the world. The traditional "wealth of
the Indies" is there, but in such a form that it yields nothing
to its possessors.

From time immemorial it has been considered im-
proper for any great heir to draw upon his father's
hoard of precious treasure and equally improper for
him not to build up a hoard of his own. The late
Nyzam of Hyderabad collected in his vaults jewels to
immense values. The present prince is understood to
prefer bullion, of which his own accumulations are said
to reach to between 150 and 200 million dollars.
Equally, every peasant in the land secretly buries silver
in the earth, and loads it upon his women's necks and
wrists and ankles, for safe-keeping. Forty per cent, of
the world's total gold production, and 30 per cent, of
the world's silver, is thus annually absorbed by India.
None of this gold is coined or goes into currency, and,

18 The Bombay Bullion Market, Don C. Bliss, Jr., U. S. Bureau of
Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Trade Information Bulletin No*
W, PP. 5-6.

[403]

MOTHER INDIA

says Mr. Bliss, of silver: "All of the absorpt?ou is in
response to the demand for bullion for . . orna-
mental uses." "Undoubtedly," he adds, "an enormous
quantity of bullion has been buried and forgotten."
The man heavily in debt to the banla commonly pos-
sesses a store of hidden coin, yet continues borrowing.
This custom rests on the idea of being prepared for
the rainy day and on a profound distrust of the human
element in any scheme of banking.

The tendency of the world's gold and silver to con-
centrate in India and there to disappear from action
tells its own story. On the one hand, an essentially
poor country could not bring such a thing about. On
the other hand, no country that buries its wealth and
then lies down and sleeps on the grave can be really
prosperous.

Turning now to the drain incurred through robbing
the soil: India, as we know, is preeminently an agri-
cultural country. But she has never fertilized her soiL
Continually taking from it, she puts nothing back *
and yet laments the thinness of her crops. Having bu*
little firewood, she burns her cow-dung for fuel. And,
being under religious taboo against the handling of
dead animal substance, the Hindu majority will not
use for bone-manure the cattle bones of which they
have such store, but, instead, sell them to be exported
to foreign parts. And they cultivate with a little wooden
plow that barely scratches the surface of the ground

Suppose that, still respecting the taboo, they used
some of their idle buried cash, or the interest it would

[404]

GLIMPSES THROUGH THE ECONOMIC LENS

bring, put to work, to buy fertilizer and machinery j
what f ar-reaching profit might not that one step effect,
did but their general way of life permit enduring
prosperity!

The fragmentation of property through the ancient
laws of inheritance, until a man's holding is so split
up Into absurdly shaped and widely scattered splinters
that its useful cultivation is impossible, is another for-
midable obstacle to the people's welfare. Those inter-
ested in the subject will find it well developed in Cal-
vert's Wealth and Welfare of the Punjab, where also
is treated the great restriction of potential revenue
through lack of women's work. 19

And here, too, though at cost of repetition, must be
recalled the enormous dead loss incurred by the coun-
try through the maintenance of its seventy-odd mil-
lions of unprofitable cattle, which, because of religious
inhibitions, may but rarely contribute even hides and
bones to the country's profit.

Last on our list of draughts upon the wealth of
India, we find the item of mendicancy.

The Brahmanic code commends renunciation of ac-
tive life and the taking up of a life of contemplation
and beggary as the proper terminal half of man's
earthly career. At the same time it teaches that he who
gives to the beggar is in reality a debtor to that beggar,
in that he who receives affords the giver a priceless
opportunity to establish credit in the life to come.

"See Appendix III F

1405]

MOTHER INDIA

Therefore neither shame nor gratitude attaches to the
beggars part, 20

In the Indian Legislative Assembly, on February 2,
1926, Sir Hari Singh Gour said: 21

In the last Census Report ... we find recorded as beg-
gars, vagrants, witches and wizards . . altogether 58 lakhs
[5,800,000], . . . But in point of fact their number is still
greater as to that class must be added saints and fakirs who
live by beggary.

Government's estimate of 1921 put the saints and
fakirs then living by beggary at 1,452,174.

Now and again these privileged ones gather in
groups of hundreds and stream across country feeding
off the populace as they go. The disciple that follows
each holy man holds out his master's begging bowl.
And rarely is he denied. One sees their encampments
in moving about the country. One meets them on the
road, almost or quite naked except for their coat of
ashes, their enormous mops of long snarled hair
bleached to the color of ginger, their eyes reddened
with drugs. At great fairs they turn out in multitudes.
A competent witness informed me that at the latest
twelfth-year fair of Madras, the two and a half miles
of road from the city to the bathing place was lined
on both sides with religious beggars sitting shoulder to
shoulder, each with an attendant squatting in front,
calling out his master's claims to alms.

* Sec Appendix III G.

** Legislative Assembly Debates, Vol. VII, No. 8, up. $35-6.

[ 4 o6]

GLIMPSES THROUGH THE ECONOMIC LENS

And now we come to a more obscure question, that
of the present economic status of the peoples in com-
parison with their condition in past eras. Mr. Gandhi
and his school affirm that the peoples of India have
been growing steadily poorer and more miserable, as
a result of British rule. To form a close surmise of the
facts is difficult indeed. The masses have, as a whole,
little ambition to raise or to change actual living con-
ditions. Their minds as a rule do not turn to the accu-
mulation of things. They are content with their mud
huts. Given windows and chimneys, they stop them up.
Given ample space, they crowd in a closet. Rather than
keep the house in repair, they let the rains wash it
away, building a new one when the old is gone. Rather
than work harder for more food, they prefer their
ancient measure of leisure and just enough food for
the day. 22

But their margin of safety is indubitably greater,
their power of resistance to calamity increased, and,
allegations to the contrary notwithstanding, means of
enlarging their income lie at all times, now, within
their hands. In just such measure as desire for material
advance awakens, one sees this demonstrated in indi-
vidual lives. 28 The question whether or not such desire
is good underlies one of the prime differences between
eastern and western thought and practice.

Now in assigning value to these factors, one must
remember that the soil of India is today supporting the

21 Census of IQZI, Vol. I, Part I, p. 54-
"Sec Appendix III H.

[4071

MOTHER INDIA

pressure of over 54,000,000 more human beings than
it sustained fifty years ago, plus an increase of 2O per
cent 14

This, again, is a result of freedom from wars and
disorders and from killing f amines j of the checking of
epidemics j and of the multiplied production of food
all elements bound to produce ever greater effect as
essential features of an established government. And
the prospects it unfolds, of sheer volume of humanity
piling up as the decades pass, is staggering. For, de-
prived of infanticide, of suttee^ and of her other native
escape-valves, yet still clinging to early marriage and
unlimited propagation, India stands today at that point
of social development where population is controlled
by disease, and disease only. 28

** Census of India, 1921, pp. 7, 48. These figures of increase are
reached after allowing for the factor of population added by
tion of territory.

**Ibid., VoL I, Part I, p. 49-

[408!

Chapter XXX

CONCLUSION

The preceding chapters of this book state living facts
of India today. They can easily be denied, but they
cannot be disproved or shaken. That there are other
facts, other columns of statistics, other angles left un-
touched by this research I do not contest.

Neither do I wish to imply that some of the most
unflattering things here affirmed of India are without
counterpart in character and tendency, if not in degree,
in certain sections of our western life. But India has
carried the principles of egocentricity and of a mate-
rialism called spirituality to a further and wider con-
clusion than has the West. The results, in the indi-
vidual, the family and the race, are only the more
noteworthy. For they cast a spotlight toward the end
of that road.

Some few Indians will take plain speech as it is
meant as the faithful wounds of a friend; far more
will be hurt at heart. Would that this task of truth-
telling might prove so radically performed that all
shock of resentment were finally absorbed in it, and
that there need be no further waste of life and time
for lack of a challenge and a declaration!

[409!

Appendix I

MEDICAL EVIDENCE

In the Indian Legislative Assembly of 1922, the
following evidence, introduced from the floor of the
House as descriptive of the conditions of the day,
aroused neither question nor opposition from any one
of the assembled Indian legislators. The fact that, al-
though thirty-one years old, it still remained beyond
challenge, carries a contributing significance. The evi-
dence submitted consists of a list, compiled in 1891 by
the western women doctors then practicing in India,
and by them laid before the Viceroy, with a petition
for intervention on behalf of the children of India. It
is made up, they affirm, entirely of instances that have
come under the hands of one or another of their own
number, and whose like are continually revealed in
their ordinary professional experience.

A. Aged 9. Day after marriage. Left femur dis-
located, pelvis crushed out of shape, flesh hanging in
shreds.

B. Aged 10. Unable to stand, bleeding profusely,
flesh much lacerated.

C. Aged 9. So completely ravished as to be almost
beyond surgical repair. Her husband had two other
living wives and spoke very fine English.

D. Aged 10. A very small child, and entirely un-
developed physically. This child was bleeding to death

MOTHER INDIA

from the rectum. Her husband was a man of about
forty years of age, weighing not less than eleven stone
[154 Ibs.]. He had accomplished his desire in an un-
natural way.

E. Aged about 9. Lower limbs completely para-
lyzed.

F. Aged about 12. Laceration of the perineum ex-
tending through the sphincter ani.

G. Aged about ro. Very weak from loss of blood.
Stated that great violence had been done her, in an un-
natural way.

H. Aged about 12. Pregnant, delivered by crani-
otomy with great difficulty, on account of the immature
state of the pelvis and maternal passage.

I. Aged about 7. Living with husband. Died in
great agony after three days.

K. Aged about 10. Condition most pitiable. After
one day in hospital, was demanded by her husband,
for his "lawful" use, he said.

L. Aged ii. From great violence done her person,
will be a cripple for life. No use of her lower extremi-
ties.

M. Aged about 10. Crawled to hospital on her
hands and knees. Has never been able -to stand erect
since her marriage.

N. Aged 9. Dislocation of pubic arch, and unable
to stand or to put one foot before the other.

The list will be found in the Legislative Assembly
Debates of 1922, Vol. Ill, Part I, p. 919, Appendix.
See also p. 882 of the Debates.

Appendix II

ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN

In framing the Reform Bill of 1919, the British
Parliament decided that the question of enfranchise-
ment for the women of India could properly be deter-
mined only by the Indian peoples themselves. Parlia-
ment accordingly allowed the old sex disqualification
to remain in the Bill} but at the same time so shaped
the electoral rules as to leave it in the power of each
province's Legislative Council to place women on the
provincial electoral register by passing a resolution to
this effect.

Pursuant of this power, the Provinces of Madras,
Bombay, Bengal, United Provinces, Punjab and Assam
have removed their sex disqualifications, granting the
vote to women on the same terms as to the male elec-
torate. Further, the Central Legislative Assembly hav-
ing passed a similar resolution, women may now vote
not only for their Provincial Councils but also for
the Legislative Assembly. Under the present general
qualifications, however, the total number of women
entitled to vote throughout India does not exceed
1,000,000, or about 17 per cent, of the total electorate.

Sir Alexander Muddiman's Reform Enquiry Com"
mittee of 1924, in opening the consideration of a fur-

413]

MOTHER INDIA

ther step that of women's candidature for elective
office reaffirmed that x

the question went deep into the social system and susceptibili-
ties of India, and . , . could only with any prudence be set-
tled in accordance with the wishes of the Indians themselves
as constitutionally expressed.

It was, however, upon the Muddiman Committee's
recommendation that the rules of candidature for Pro-
vincial Councils were lately amended, enabling the re-
moval of the sex disqualification by vote of Provincial
Council. To this invitation Madras and Bombay have
already responded.

The Muddiman Committee next recommended that
the electoral rules of both chambers of the Indian Leg-
islature the Council of State and the Assembly be
amended by the removal of the sex disqualification, so
that constituencies in provinces that have enfranchised
their women might at will elect women to both Cham-
bers. On September I, 1926, the Indian Legislature so
voted.

Thus far, however, it seems to be the British Pro-
vincial Governor rather than the Indian electorate that
uses the new privilege. From 1922 to 1926, twenty-
two women had become Municipal Councilors or
Members of Local Government Boards, of whom only
four were elected, the rest being nominated by Gov-
ernment. 2

The following statement is that of an Englishman

* Report of the Reforms Enquiry Committee, 1924, p. 57.
1 Indian Year Book, 1926, p. 511.

ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN

deeply conversant with Indian affairs, one who wields
much moral influence in India, and who vigorously
used that influence to advocate the changes above in-
dicated. It was elicited by my request for the grounds
of his position and his view of the present status, and
was elsewhere confirmed by ranking Indians.

As for the reason for enfranchising Indian women, I can
give you my own reasons, which I put before the Parlia-
mentary Committee which framed the Act. In some places
women had long enjoyed the municipal franchise, especially
in Bombay. There were a considerable number of women, in
Bombay, who took a very useful part in our social work.
Therefore I pressed for the enfranchisement of women, both
to encourage and hearten these where actually so engaged, and
to give others inducements to come forward. The furdah
must be broken as fast as it can ... its influence on the
health of Indian women is disastrous. I looked on the fran-
chise as another nail in the -purdah coffin.

As for the effect of enfranchisment in the Bombay Presi-
dency, so far as I can see, it has been slight; the women in
public life are the women who were there in one way or
another before enfranchisement took place. In other parts of
India I should say the effect was smaller still. Until the social
conditions have improved, the franchise can mean nothing to
the Indian woman, for she dares not use it.

In observing the position of the women of Bombay,
outstanding in India, one heavily contributing factor
appears: This city is the great Parsi center. Out of the
total number of Parsis in all India 101,778 nearly
93,000 are domiciled in Bombay Presidency. 8 Descend-

8 Census of India, 1921, Vol. I, p. 118.

[415]

MOTHER INDIA

ants of old Persian stock, the Parsis are practically all
either merchants or bankers. Eight hundred per 1,000
of their men are literate, as against the 115 literates
per 1,000 of male Hindus. The Parsis neither sequester
nor suppress their women, but favor their adequate
education. Thus 672 per i,ooo 4 of the women of the
Parsis are literate, as against the 14 per i,OOO female
literates of the Hindus.

The presence of such a body, occupying conspicuous
positions, cannot but influence the whole upper-class
population.

* Census of Jfaft*, ip*z, p. i8a

Appendix III
A

INDIAN COTTON

The record of raw cotton exported from India in the
years 1924-25 is as follows, the unit being bales of 400
pounds: *

Japan 1,67 1, OOO

Italy 485,000

China (excluding Hong Kong) 284,000

Belgium 201,000

Germany 174,000

The United Kingdom 162,000

Of the raw cotton exported to England the Lan-
cashire looms use little because of its inferior quality,
buying, rather, in Egypt and in America.

India's total raw cotton export, in 1924-25, was
3,326,400 bales. 2 Her consumption in Indian mills
during that period was 2,050,891 bales.

Japan's purchase is mostly of the poorer grades of
cotton and is mainly used in competing in China with
the product of India's mills. In 1924 there were 337
cotton mills in British India. These are nearly all

1 Review of the Trade of India in 1924-25, Calcutta, Government of
India Central Publication Branch, 1926^ p. 73.
* Ibid., pp. 21-2.

MOTHER INDIA

Indian-owned and as a rule have British superin-
tendents and foremen, with Indian labor. The follow-
ing figures 8 will further clarify the situation:

1922-23 1923-24 1924-25
Million Million Million Million
Yards Yards Yards Yards
Production in Indian

mills of cotton

piece goods ..... 1,164.3 x >7 2 5- 2 1,701.6 1,970.5
Export of Indian-

milled piece goods 89.2 I57-O 165.3 181.5
Imports of foreign-

made cotton piece-

goods, from all

countries, including

the United King-

dom, Japan, Italy,

Netherlands and

the United States. 3,197.1 1,593-3 1,485.8 1,823.2

It will thus be seen that while the production and
the export trade of India have been rising, the import
itade is about half what it was before 1914.

B

RAILWAY STATISTICS

The following figures as of the year 1925 are based
on statistics contained in The Statesman's Year Book
of 1926:

* Review of the Trade of India w 1924-2$, p. 23.

[418]

MILITARY EXPENDITURE

United

India Argentine States Canada
Mileage open per

1 ,000 square miles

of territory in 21 19 88 15

Number of passengers

carried per mile of

open railway 15*834 5,966 3,550 814

Tons of goods carried

per mile of open

railway 2,785 2,042 8,277 2,019

Tatal value of imports

and exports carried

per mile of open

railway $56>9 2 9 $73><>9 2 $33> 116 $35>647

MILITARY EXPENDITURE

An acknowledged authority thus puts the frame of
the matter: 4

The safe figure of a nation's military expenditure ... is
fixed by considerations almost entirely beyond the country's
control; by her geographical and ethnological boundaries, by
the power and attitude of her neighbours, by her national
resources in men and material, by her racial unity or disunity,
and so on. ... What requires investigation is whether
[India's] total budget ... is worthy of her immense terri-
tories and their prosperity. Were that total to be increased
largely, the defence item would remain virtually stationary,

4 The Defence of India, "Arthur Vincent," pp. 93-4.

MOTHER INDIA

and tho disproportion would disappear to the point of making
India one of the best-placed nations in the world for protec-
tive expenditure.

D

THE USURER

Of the Punjab banui Mr. Calvert writes: *

He represents the richest single class. His profits probabljr
exceed those of all the cultivators put together. Beside him,
the professional class is inconsiderable; the industrial class
is insignificant, even trade and commerce take second place.

But the usurer is by no means peculiar to the Punjab.
The total rural debt of British India is estimated at
approximately $1,900,000,000, in the main unproduc-
tive. This burden is largely due to the vicious usury
and compound interest system, a trifling percentage is
incurred for land improvement, and the rest may be
mainly attributed to extravagant expenditures on mar-
riages.

E

BULLION

The export of merchandise from India, in the year
1924-25, exceeded the import to the value of over
$5OO,OOO,OOO. e During that year the import of pri-
vate treasure totaled $328,ooo,ooo. T

5 The Wealth and Welfare of the Punjab, H. Calvert, Lahore*

p. 130.

6 Review of the Trade of India, p. 47.

[420]

LOSS OF WOMEN'S LABOR

America, during 1924-25, imported Indian goods *
to the value of $117,000,000. Yet she sold to India
only $46,900,000 worth of goods and exported to India
bars of silver on private account of approximately the
same value and gold to the value of $67,700,000. This
process is steadily increasing as the years pass, raising
the world's price of bullion.

LOSS OF WOMEN'S LABOR

Calvert says, in his Wealth and Welfare of the
Pirn jab, p. 207:

If there were in Western countries a movement aiming
at the exclusion of female labour from all except purely
domestic tasks, that movement would endanger the whole
economic fabric, and, if successful, would involve those
countries in ruin. . . . The fact that there are [Indian]
tribes . . . which do not allow their womenfolk even to
work in the fields is alone sufficient to explain their poverty.

The same point is recognized by the Hindu writer,
Visvesvaraya, in his Reconstructing India, p. 246:

The time has come when Indians must seriously consider
whether the passive life, to which they condemn women with
a view of preserving the so-called proprieties and decencies
of life, is worth the appalling price the country is forced to
pay in the shape of loss of work and intelligent effort from
half the population of the country.

Ibid., pp. 4& 60-1, 76.

U2IJ

MOTHER INDIA

MENDICANCY

On February 2, 1926, Mr. Abdul Haye, Muham-
madan member from the East Punjab, introduced into
the Indian Legislative Assembly a resolution looking
to the prohibition of beggary and vagrancy in India.
Supporting it, he said in part: 9

One wonders whether the stars in heaven are more in num-
ber or the beggars in this country. . . . Barring agricul-
ture there is no other profession in India which can claim
more followers. . . . I make bold to say and without any
fear of contradiction that every twenty-fifth man in this
country is a beggar.

Of these mendicants Lala Lajpat Rai says in his
National Education in India> p. 37:

We find that today a good part of the nation (sometimes
estimated at one- fourth), having abandoned all productive
economic work, engages itself in ... making the people
believe that next to becoming a Saddhu [a begging ascetic]
himself, the best thing for man to do to avoid damnation is
to feed and maintain Saddhus.

H

ECONOMIC CONDITION OF THE MASSES

As general circumstantial evidence of increased
means, one sees the consumption by the peasants of
Legislative Assembly Debates, Vol. VII, No. 8, p. 627.

[422]

ECONOMIC CONDITION OF THE MASSES

non-essentials, once beyond their dreams. Thus, at the
fair at Aligarh, in February, 1926, the turnover of
cheap boots in one week amounted to $5,000, netting
a profit of 20 per cent. Boots, to the sort of peo-
ple who snapped these up and put them on their own
feet, were, twenty years ago, an unheard-of luxury.
Big stocks of umbrellas, lamps, and gayly painted iron
trunks were sold out and renewed over and over again,
on the same occasion, the buyers being the ordinary
cultivators. Tea, cigarettes, matches, lanterns, buttons,
pocket-knives, mirrors, gramophones are articles of
commerce with people who, fifteen years ago, bought
nothing of the sort. The heavy third-class passenger
traffic by rail is another evidence of money in hand.
For railway travel, to the Indian peasant, takes the
place that the movie fills in America. In 1924-25,
581,804,000 third-class railway travelers, as against
1,246,000 of the first-class, proved the presence of
money to spare in the peasants' possession. "Where
are they all going?" I repeatedly asked, watching the
crowds packing into the third-class carriages.

"Anywhere. Visiting, pilgrimage, marriage parties,
little business trips just 'there and back/ mostly for
the excitement of going," was the answer.

Index

Achanra, M. K., quoted, 40-1

Adult Education, 209, note

Afghanistan, its threat, 322 ; incited
by Russia, 323, 346

Age of Consent within Marriage
Bonds, raised, in 1891, 33-4; bill
to raise defeated, 38 ; passed, 39 ;
discussion in legislature, 39 ct
*eq.

Agriculturalist, see cultivator

Ahmad, Moulvi, Rafiuddin, quoted,
257

All -India Muslim League proclaims
identity of Muslim and Hindu
interests, and common desire for
Swaraj, 339; ^assemblage of,
1925; presidential address on
Hindu-Muslim relations, 348-51

AH brothers, the, Khilafat and
Moplah rebellion; alliance with
Gandhi, 328-31

Akbar, Emperor, 274

America, Indian propagandists in,
304-5

American Grazing and Fodder Sta-
tistics, 228-9

American Presbyterian Mission at
Allahabad, 184

Americans, use lor, as seen by In-
dian civicists, 197

American Railway Bonds, 392-3

American Trade Commissioner in
Bombay, quoted, 403

Animals, cruelty to, see cruelty to
animals

Anti-Brahmans, rise of, 146; defeat
of, 146, note; leader quoted,
178-0

Anti-Malaria Cooperative Society
of Bengal, 368

Army, British personnel in. ao

Army, the, see Defense of India

Arungzeb. Emperor, 275, 285

Aruvedic Medicine, its nature, and
illustrations of, 383-7

Balfour, Dr. Andrew, quoted on
domestic sanitation, 118; on
book- worm,

Banerjee, Babu, K. N., 368

Banerjee, Sir Gooroo Dass, quoted,
185

Bania (usurer), 400-2; his hold on
victim, 401 ; numbers, in Punjab,
401; hatred of British, 401-2;
enemy of literacy, 401-2; power
in legislatures, 402; Appendix
III D, 420

"B. A. Plucked," 185-6, 186, note

Beggars, see mendicancy

Benares, 355-61 ; Municipal Health
Officer of, a Rockefeller Founda-
tion scholarship man, 355 ; popu-
lation, 356 ; Public Health budget,
356; Health Officer's task, 356-
60 ; drainagCj 357 ; burning-ghat,
359; tempJe interior described by
Brahman scientist, 360: Public
Health Officer's job ''rotten,"
360-1

Bengal, education of women in,
128; higher education of women
little desired, 132; original ver-
nacular schools, 1 80; attitude of
men toward women, 203-4; atti-
tude of Legislative Council on
Cruelty to Animals, 251; treat-
ment of draught buffaloes in Cal-
cutta, 251 ; chief cholera center
of world, 370, 371-2; cholera
statistics of, 371-2; hook-worm
in, 374

Bernier, Frangois, on reason for
persecuting widows, 82; on con-
dition of cattle and pasturage, ^in
Moghul period. 230; on proprie-
torship of land, 282; on Bengal,
282; on miserable condition of
country at large, 282-3

Bhagavata, quoted, on penalty for
killing a Brahman, 152; of kill-
ing a Sudra, 152

Bhargava, Rai Bahadur Pandit,
J. L., quoted, 224

Bhattacharjee, Mohini Mohan,
quoted, 132

Bliss, Don C., Jr., quoted on bul-
lion in India.

wwv/iv- w v M, /o iiuu III 4UUUO, tpjj

Bamji, Manamohandas, quoted, 167 Blunt, E. A. H., quoted, on Indian
Banerjea, Sir Surondranath, quoted, condemnation of woman teacher.
88, 155 Jo6

[425]

INDEX

Bombay, n: education of women
in, 136; Legislative Council, on
Untouchables, 157-8; advance in
untouchables 1 educational statis-
tics, 161 ; malaria a threat to
shipping, 367; Parsis in, 116,

4i5

Bose, Miss Mona, quoted, 138-9

Brahman, the, worshiper of Kali,
10 ; Madras a stronghold, 146;
crushes the Dravidian, 146; de-
scription of origin and exactions,
147-9; origin of, 151; penalty
for killing, 1 52 ; penalty incurred
by. for murder of lower caste,
152; versus Untouchable, 166;
and peoples' education, 178-9;
backward intellectual history of,
179; used by Muslim conquerors
for paper-work, 325-6

Brahman official, on marriage code,
65 ; physician, on effect of sexual
extravagance, 32; legislator, on
wife's status, 37; priests, and
circumcised Hindus, 332

Brahmo Satnachar, quoted, 29

Brahrao Samaj, schooling of its
women, 132; denned, 132, note;
on Untouchabihty, 165; marriage
age among, 206, note; as to
school teachers, 207-8

Brar, Sardar Bahadur Captain Hira
Singh, on infant marriage, 45 ;
on conservative influence of
women, ^ 131

British in India, number of,

20-1

British Administration, 16; rate of
country's development under, 17,
19; course on child-marriage leg-
islation pleases no faction, 34 ;
and widow re-marriage, 86-7 ;
and education of Untouchables,
156-7; attitude condemned, for
non-interference, 158; responsible
for all Indian social work, 165;
condemned for not providing of-
fice for each man educated in
university, 188; expenditure on
education, 199, note; accused of
purposely making practical teach-
ing unattractive, 209-10; ar-
raigned by Hindu nobleman,
211-3: arraigned by "Young
India as causing deterioration
of cattle, 227-8 ; 232-3 ; respon-
sible for over-burden of cattle,
233; direct government assumed
by Crown, 288 ; governmental
structure under Reforms of 1919,
289 el tcq.; fantastic changes

[426]

against, in Indian Legislature,
297 ; against United States, 197 :
administration of Reforms of
1919, 300, 302; perhaps over-
sensitive to noise, 302-3; rela-
tions with Indian princes a treaty
relation, 307; relations with In-
dian states and effect thereon,
pi 5-6; held dormant Hindu-Mu-
nammadan jealousies, 324-5 ; jus-
tice of, 324 ; retention desired by
Muslims, 339-42 ; characterized
by northwest Frontier leader,
347-8 ; by Sir Abdur Rahim, 349-
5 1 ; accused of breeding Hindu-
Muslim dissensions, 352 ; control
of epidemics, 372; negotiates
public utilities loans, 393 ; and
famine, 394-5 ; produces glory of
usurer, 401 ; increases popula-
tion, 407-8

British East India Company, be-
ginnings, 284 ; first posts, 284-5 ;
a trading company, 285 ; sets up
armed force, 286 ; Parliament as-
sumes partial control of, 286;
undertakes establishment of peace
and order and annexes territory,
286; introduces law and justice;
mistaken officers of, 287 ; rising
standards of, 287 ; fine work of,
287 ; its rule terminated by Par-
liament, 288

British Man-power in India, 21
British Trading Charters, Original,

284

Buddhists, numbers of, 324, note
Buffalo, the water (carabao), its
usefulness and high butter fat,
245-6; cruelty to calves, 346;
cruelty to, in Calcutta, 251
Bulandshahr, the flood in, in 1924,

Bullion, 3 ; India's disposition of
an ancient world- tax, 402 ; secre-
tion of, 402-5 ; D. C. Bliss on,
403 ; princes' hoards, 403 ; peas-
ants' hoards, 403 ; their signifi-
cance to India, 403-5 ; exports
and imports of treasure, Appen-
dix III D, 420-1

Burning-ghat, burning a woman,
7-8 ; of Benares, 359

Calcutta, 3-4; riots, 351-2

Calvert, Hubert, C. I. quoted,
420

Cannibalism, in India, common ac-
companiment of famine in pre-
British days, 277; the Badshah
Namah on, in Deccan, 277 ;

INDEX

Dutch witness to, 278 ; Peter Chakravarti, Brajalal, quoted, 124-5

Mundy on. 278 Chandragupta, Emperor, 270-1

Capitalists, Indian, demand exorbi- Chandravarkar, Sir ^Narayan,

tant rates, 393 ; and public utility quoted, on British origin of In-

bonds, 393 ; see also Bania
Caste System, 151; inflammatory

dian awakening as to Untouch-

cffect of any attack upon, 1553
British East India Company and
British Crown on, as to educa-
tional rights, 156-7; not to be
confused with snobbery, 156,
169; creates in higher castes
aversion to useful pursuits, 185 ;
higher castes averse to education
of lower, 214; in relation to
working of democracy, 295-6;
demands nepotism and class fa-
voritism, 301-2; and removal of
night soil, <J73 ; caste-marriage
laws economic drain on country,
399 e* seq.

Cattle, India devoured by, 223 ;
number of, 223 ; estimated an-
nual loss by, 223 ; going to pas-
ture, 226; tranquillity of, 226-7;
pasturage absorbed by Govern-
ment's greed, 227 ; deteriorated
through Government's policy,
227-8 ; unintelligence and callous-
ness of Indian toward, 229-30 ;
pasturage of, past and present,
230; "selection by starvation,"
231 ; selection and use of bulls,
231 ; Higginbottom on, 232; pas-
turage in Bengal, 232; depreda-
tions of hungry, on crops, 232 ;
fodder, 232 ; starvation of, laid
to British, 233: British respon-
sible for over-ourden of, 233 ;
Government's experimental work
in, Chap. XVIII ; America's
breeding, in Philippines, 235;
American Holstein-Friesians im-
ported by British Government,
236-7 ; native milch breeds, 236-
7 ; milk production of half-breeds,
236; "dual purpose," 238; beef,
price of, 238; fodder-growing on
Government farms, 238 ; travel-
ing lecturers, 238 ; indifference
of Indian to development of,
239 ; gvalas, 239 ; maltreatment
of herd bulls offered by Govern-
ment, 238-40 1 slaughtered, by
Hindu collusion, 241-2; tail-
breaking justified, 243 ; other
method of speeding, 243 ; see
also Cruelty to Animals
Census of India, quoted, 22, 44
Census, of the United Provinces,
(Hioted, 70

[427]

ability, 165-6

Chowdri, Mrs., sub-assistant sur-
geon, on mid-wifery, 95

Chatter jee, Rai Bahadur. Dr. G. C.,
his anti-malarial work, 368

Chauri Chaura, massacre of Hin-
dus, by Hindus, 332-3

Chetty, Shanmukhan, quoted, con-
demning infant marriage, 38

Chiefs' Colleges, 311-2

Children, condition at birth. 23 ;
taught to dwell on sex relation,
23 ; made prostitute, 25 ; mor-
tality. 35 ; effect of child mother-
hooc jn, 45 ; feeding at birth, 97

Child-birth, deaths in, 44; instance
of Zemindar's wife. 78; ritual-
istic uncleanness ox mother at,
92-3, 98, 105: no preparations
made for, 92 ; handling by native
midwives, 91 et seq.; confine-
ment of a princess, 102-3 ; fate
of woman dying in, 104 ; con-
ducted from cow s back, 106-7

Child-marriages, abstract uneasiness
concerning, among Hindus; or-
thodox insistence on, 27 ; attitude
of Government of India on, 33,
et seq., impossibility of control
by law. 33; et seq.; arguments
for and against, 33 et seq.; dis-
putes concerning, 44; univer-
sality ^ of, f among Hindus, 44 ;
Captain Hira Singh Brar on, 45 ;
instances of effect, 53-6; de-
fended, 60

Child mother, 16; age of mother-
hood, 22; ignorance of the, 23,
131-2

Cholera, transmitted from holy
places, 359, et seq.; and village
well, 369-72; India the greatest
cholera center of world, 369 ;
how transmitted, 369-70 ; no cure
known, 370; mortality, 370;
pandemics of, 370 ; United States
attacked, 370; relation of United
States to cholera threat of India,
371 ; cholera in Bengal, 371-2 ; in
Kashmir and the Punjab, 372;
fairs and pilgrimages the great
danger source, 372

Christian converts, persecution of,
1 60; rating of , 164, 169; furnish
large part of teachers, 207-8

Christopher* Lieut.-Col n I. M. S

INDEX

on deatn rate and expectation of
life, 380-1

Color, religion or descent, no bar

to office, under British East

India Company, 287 ; nor under

British Government, 193-4

Confinements, 23, see also Dhai,

and Child-birth

Conservatism, of Orthodox Hindu,
34; of Hindu women, 101, 108-9
Cooperative Credit, rural, 402
Constituency, see electorate
Continence, impossibility of, 27 ; no
question of right or wrong in-
volved, 27

Cotton, Indian, 3, 66; "economic
drain" through, as seen by In-
dian economist, 389; his state-
ment on, 390-2; facts, 39"; how
used in England, 390; excise
duty on, rescinded, 390-1 ; Indian
piece-goods coarse, 390-1 ; Lan-
cashire ill India, 390-1 ; poor
quality of Indian crop, 390, 417;
Japan's consumption and compe-
tition, 391 ; government's effort
to improve, 391 ; improved pro-
duction discouraged by Swarajist,
391 ; statistics, Appendix III,
417-8

Council of State, the, 289-90
Cow, origin of sanctity of, 224 ;
Maharaja Scindia kills a cow,
224 ; Hindus' mother, 224 ; pres-
ence at Hindu's death, 224 ; at
Maharaja of Kashmir's death,
224; "five substances of," puri-
fication by, 225 ; collection of
urine from, for religious use, 225 ;
Galletti-de-Cadilhac on Indian's
neglect of, 230; becomes scaven-
ger from hunger. 232 ; fine milch
animals bred oy Government,
?3S-7 ' uses of, to Hindus, 238 ;
impious to weigh milk of, 240 ;
destruction of young milch, 240 ;
sacrificial killing by Muhamma-
dans, 241 ; Gandhi on Hindu and
cow-killing, 241-2; slaughter-
house shareholders Hindus and
B rah mans, 242 ; phuka and peuri-
making, tortures of cows, 244-5 ;
slow starvation of calves, by
Hindu, 245 ; skinning and stuff-
ing: of starved calf, 245 ; fate of
villagers' cows, 247; Gandhi on
modern cow worship and cow
protection, 262 : merit gained by
exchange with outcher, 263 ; hor-
rors of cow-protection establish-

ing 1

[428]

rapoles, 266 ; Bombay Association
for Protection of. 267-8; num-
ber "tortured to death*' in Bom-
bay, 267

"Criminal Tribes," 155

Cruelty to animals, by tail break-
ing, 243 ; by overloading, 244 ; by
special tortures to increase milk
and to produce dye, 244; live
calves thrown on dumps to die,
245 ; slow starvation of calves,
243, 252; inhumanity to buffalo
calves, 246 ; Gandhi on, killing of
calves by starvation, 246-7 ; nnal
fate of village cows, 247 ; Young
India, on, 250; measure against,
in Bombay Legislative Council,
251 et seq.; legislation to pre-
vent, 250, 259; no public opinion
against, 250 ; protective legisla-
tion passed against Hindu indif-
ference or hostility, 251; discus-
sion in Bombay Legislative Coun-
cil on, 251 et scq.; now a Trans-
ferred Subject, 260-1 ; India
"cruelest country in world," 262 ;
in pin j rapoles, and Bombay sta-
bles, 264-7

Cultivator, the, 66 ; rating of caste,
151; and education, 209 ; con-
servatism of, 209, 210; attitude
of higher castes toward his edu-
cation, 214; characterized, 215;
attitude toward British, 216; un-
reached by printed word, 299 ;
without interest in or access to
politics, 299-30 ; never visited by
politician except as agitator, 299-
30

Dairyfarm, imperial, at Bangalore,
235 ; at Lucknow, 236-7 ; oreed-
ing, fodder-growing and teaching
in, 235-7 ; under jBritish super-
visors, 238-9

Dan i ell, Clarmont John, quoted,
402

Datia, H. H., the Maharaja of, his
territory and armed forces, 314

Datta, Dr. S. K., quoted, 38

Debt, burden of, 400-2; iruit of
British presence, 401

Defecation, Hindu manner of, de-
scribed by Mr. Gandhi, 362-3 ;
Indian national congressmen and,
363, note ; and water-supply, sec
Tanks and Wells; and public
health, see Benares and Lahore;
and epidemics, see Cholera, Ty-
phoid and Hook-worm ; Hindu

meats, 264-7 ; starvation in pinj- nabits of, described by Municipal

INDEX

Chairman, 372; Hindu religious
ritual of, 373, and note
Btfense of India, costs and relative
taxation figures. 396; India's
ceds, 396*7; where the money

Behlav'i, Honorable AH Mahomed
Khan, quoted, 255

Democracy, alien to Oriental mind,
*95 *95 J relation of caste sys-
tem and law of transmigration to
working of democratic system of
government, 29 5-6 ^ lack of ac-
tomplisbed consecutive stages fa-
tal to, 295-6

Desai, Rao Sahib D. P., quoted,
254, 256

Desai, Govindbhai H., Naib Dewan
of Baroda, cited, on education,
189

Pesai, V. G., quoted, on pasturage
of cattle, 227, 228 ; quoted on
Hindus' cruelty to animals, 250

Deterioration of < Hindu peoples,
Brahman physician asserts, 32,
60

Dev, S. S., quoted, 253

Devadassis, 47-50

Development of the country, ele-
ments determining rate of, 16-
1 7 : rate of, 1 9-20 ; by railways
and roads, 302-5

Bhai, ignorance of; low social sta-
tus of: practices of, 91 et scq.;
pay of, for services, 105; at-
tempted instruction of, 106 ; paid
not to practice, 106

Dheds, character of, 164

Biet, Hindu, defective, effect on
mother, in child-birth, 98 ; Mu-
hammadan, superiority of, 1 1 1 ;
superior, of northern races and
Muhammadan, 380; poor, of
Hindu, 380

District Commissioner. 13; Deputy
Commissioner and the villager*
215-6 ; of Nadia, 334-5 ; of Luck*
BOW, and the Hindu-Muslim tern*

pie riots, 32? , , A
Doctors, British and American
Women, stories of, 71 ; testimo-
nies, Chapters^ V and VII I ; ^ tes-
tify on condition of child wives,
58, and Appendix I ; life of In-
dian mothers depends on, 98
Dogs, of India, condition of, 247;
rabies among, 247, 248, note; un-
limitable increase, 247-8; may
not be killed, castrated, cared for
or fed, 248-9
Dravidians, their downfall and new

[429!

beginnings, 146 ; their condemna-
tion, 151 ; Sappers at Kut, 172-3
Dubpis, the Abbe, on the Hindu
wife, 74; on literacy and status
of women, 123 ; on Untouchables,
154; on Brahman attitude toward
public education, 178-9; on back-
ward intellectual status of Brah-
rnans, 179; on panchagavia puri-
fication ceremony and religious
use of cow urine, 225 ; on reli-
gious ceremonial of defecation,

Dutch trade with India, 284
Dutt, Amar Nath, quoted, 40
Dutta, Rabindra Mohan, quoted,

125
Dyarchy, 189

"Economic Drains," as seen by In-
dian economists, 389-99

Economic Drains, actual, from
hook-worm, 374; from sickness
and debility, 381 ; from marriage
costs, 399; from the usurer,
400-2 ; from hoarding of bullion,
401-4; from robbing the soil
without return, 404-5 ; from frag-
mentation of land, 405 ; from
unprofitable cattle, 223, 405 ; loss
of women's labor, Appendix III,
F., 421

Economic and Social Status of the
Masses in "Golden Age," 275 et
seq. ; Gandhi on, 407 ; difficulty
of estimating, 407; circumstan-
tial evidence^ on, 391, 423

Education, subject transferred to
Indian control, 129, 189; attitude
of British East Indian company
on caste inhibitions, 156; the
Crown on caste inhibitions, 156;
difficulty of giving, to Untouch-
ables, 157; refused to Untouch-
ables in Madras, 157; refused to
Untouchables all over India, iO-
60, 200; Untouchables in Punjab
tricked, 160-1 ; politicians would
have compulsory, 178; Brahman
attitude toward, 178-9; Warren
Hastings on, 179; British East
India Company's policy on, 179;
David Hare's and Raja Ram
Mohan Roy's efforts, 1 80 ; Casey,
Marshman and Ward's school,
1 80; Alexander Duff's school,
180; T. B. Macaulay on, 181-2;
departments of public instruction
set up, 181-2; original vernacular
schools, 1 80; Government's edu-
cational purpose stated, x*te;

INDEX

Government insists on vernacular tility toward. 193, 200; number
teaching, 182; Government and of female illiterates, 200
Oriental learning, 182; technical, Electorate, the, 290-1 ; basis of the

never popular, 182-3; statistics
of students in technical courses,
183 ; only education leading to
office desired, 184; "fading" of
Indian student, 184; educated
man refuses useful work, 185-6;
produces hatred of government if
not followed by gift of place,
187-8; permissive compulsory
law for primary grades, enacted,
189; number of primary schools
and scholars, actual and possible,
IQI ; difficulties created by caste,
138, 192; villages without lead-

Reforms, 299; non-existent, 290;

constituency not consulted by

legislators, 300

Enfranchisement of Women, Ap-
pendix II, 413-6; Gandhi on

votes for women, 61
English Nursing Sisters, stories of.

^8, 162-3

Epidemics, in early days, 276
Expectation of life, short, of Hindu,

31 ; Lt.-Col. Christopher, I. M. S.,

on, 380

, , . . "Fading," of brilliant Indian stu-

ers, 193; government's mistakes dents, 184

in policy, 193; Queen Victoria's Famine, in early days, 276; mor-

Proclamation on education, and A - 1 '*- J M ~" " J

office, 193-4; undigested western

education and its effect, 105-6;
actual work of, in villages,

197-8; opinion of British Civil
Servant, 198; governmental ex-
penditure on, 199, note; of vil-
lages impossible because of status
of women, 201 et seq.; of adults,
209, note ; higher castes and cul-
tivators' education, 214; village
school teacher, 215; American
business man on educational sys-
tem, 217; American educator on
system, 217; of Princes, 311-2;
change of language in courts of
justice, effect on, 326; provincial
budgets for, 381

Education of Women, lack of
women as teachers, 17; of
women, not formerly undertaken,
123; of women, feared, 125; of
wives, desired by some educated
men, 1 26-7 ; Calcutta University
Commission on opposition to
women's education, 1 27-8 ; Gov-
ernment's policy, 128; Christian
Mission's effort, 128; rate of
progress, 128-9; schools and
school attendance, 129-30; elder
women oppose, 131 ; parents' ob-
jection to pay for, 131-2, 134.
137-8: higher, "beyond reform,"
132; in University, accepted only
by Brahmos or Christians, 132;
number of women in arts and
professional colleges, 1 32 ; higher,
opposed, 133; after marriage,
133; of ladies of high rank,
134-7; indifference of rich men
to daughters', 133-4; maintained
by western charity, 140-1 ; hos-

[430]

tality and cannibalism, occasioned
by, 277-8; the terror wiped out
by railroads, roads and Fords,

394
Field, Harry Hubert, this book's

debt to, Foreword
Flattery, western policy of, toward

Indian, 18, 62

"Forcible Conversion," 330-2
Ford, Henry, ''God bless," 395
French, the, in India, 284, 5 ;
French -and-Indian Wars of Brit-
ish colonists, simultaneous in
America and India, 285

Galletti-di-Cadilhac, A. M. A. C.

?uoted, on Dutch policy toward
avan cultivator, 229; on atti-
tude of Indian toward cow, 230
Gandhi, M. K., n; accuses the
British, 15, 19; on own boyhood
relations with wife, 26-7, 62 ; on
vicious Hindu attitude toward
women, 75 ; on artificial devices
to overcome impotence, 29 ; on
child-marriage, 59; on "Votes
for Women," 61, 86; on enforced
widowhood, 88 ; discredited, 89 ;
aupted, 117; calls Government
' vile beyond description," 166 ;
fights Untouchability, 166-8; lit-
tle followed therein, 167 ; Hindu
mass meeting to denounce atti-
tude of, on Untouchability, 167;
covert threat to lynch, 167 ;
Quoted, on Untouchability, 168;
denounces visit of H. R. H. the
Prince of Wales to India, call-
ing for boycott, 173; violent
sequel, 17^; on results of west-
ern teaching, in Indian minds,
196; disapproves literacy **

INDEX

peasantry, 196; on possibility of Grandmother, the Hindu, 80, 108,
Indians serving the villages. 216 ; 136

described, 221-2; on cow-killing Grazing and Fodder Statistics of
by Hindu collusion. 241 ; on tor-
ture of cows to make dye, 244-5 '
on starving of calves, 246-7; on _.__,_

sin of killing, 249; on sin of Grieg, E. D. W., cited, 370, 371

feeding stray dogs, 249 j on cow Griffin, Miss Edris, on childbirth
protection, 262; the neighboring customs, 98

pin irapole, 267 ; his war upon the Goswamy, Haridas, quoted, 125

fr / * _ -_o . i Trt_ii_r_j. ** W' . ~..' f ' - *

America, 228-9; grazing and
feeding of cattle in India, 227
et seq.

Reforms, 298; embraces Khilafat
movement, 328; outcome among
Moplahs, 328-31; name used in
placards demanding violation of

362-3 ; exonerates British officials
from responsibility for Indian's
filth, 364 ; on Indian and Eu-
rope's medical ethics, 382 ; ex-
horts public health and medical
students to desert classes, 383 ;
his appendicitis, 387-8; on wick-
edness of railways, 393-41 de-
cries movements of grain as rob-
bing the country, 395
'ranges, "most ancient outlet of,"
8-9; valley of, t chief cholera
center, 370; healing and purify-
ing powers of, 8-10; Ganges

Gour, Dr. Hari Singh, quoted, 126

Government Loans, Interest on,
"unsupportable economic drain
on country," 392-3

Gupta, Abani Mohan Das, quoted,
122

Gwalior, Maharaja Scindia, of, kills
a cow, 224

Gynecology, practice in, rarely pos-
sible for male doctors, 98

Hare, David, educational work of,
1 80

Hariprasad. Doctor, quoted, 31

Hastings, Warren, educational pol-
icy of, 179

Haye, Mr. Abdul, on mendicancy,
422

Health Officer of Calcutta, on fe-
male mortality due to purdah,
"7-8

water, 104; at Benares, 355 et Hehir, Major-General Sir Patrick,

c/f/j "rnnnof V* nr11iit#f1. icR: T AT. __ nti Arnv^Hin m^irin*

scq.; "cannot be polluted,
"filtering takes the holiness out,"
358

Gaushalas, see Pinjrapoles

Ghosh, Rai Harinath, quoted, on
objection to cost of education of
girls, 131

Girl-children, birth of, unwelcome,
69-71; infanticide of, 69-70;
school of piety for, 90; suicide
of, at puberty, 400

Goats, sacrifice of, to Kali, 6;
purification of, 9; current cus-
tom of skinning alive, 260; lo-
cating wells by means of, 365

Gold and silver, percentage of
world's annual production hoard-
ed by India. 403

"Golden Age, argument for, 270;
"destroyed by Britain," 270;
conditions in, 270-83

Grain, Bania corners it, before
crop shortages, 401 ; normal
movement of grain decried by
Gandhi, 395 ; increased grain
production, 395

Grand Trunk Road, at the Khyber
Pass, 65-6 ; H. R. H. the Prince
of Wales on, 176

I.

384

on Aruvedic medicine,

[431]

Heiser, Dr. V. G., cited, 369-70

Higginbottom, Samuel, cited, on
status of cattle, 232

Highroads, 394

Hindu peoples, misery of, in pre-
British days, 274 et seq.; per-
centage of, 324 ; percentage of,
in major provinces, 342

Hindu-Muslim Dissensions, long
dormant, and why, 324-5, 327 ;
aroused by "Indian Councils
Act" of 1900, 325. 327; tension
today, 328 ; brief farce of union,
under Gandhi and the Alls, 328;
Moplah outbreak, 328-32; non-
existent in villages save where
incited, 334; Hindu boatmen re-
fuse to save drowning Muslims,
334 ; Muhammadan night school
aided by Hindus, in Nadia, 334 ;
temple riots in Lucknow, 335-6;
effect on public interests, 343-5 ;
story of Muslim judge, 344; of
young Muslim collector, 345 ;
North-West Frontier Muslim
leader on, 347-8; President of
Indian National Congress on.

INDEX

348; Sir Abdur Rahim on, 340; Service, effect of, in Kashmir

51: Calcutta Riots. 351; Gandhi cholera outbreak, 372

and Swarajists allege fomented Indian Legislature, preponderantly

by British, 352 : Maulvi Muham- Hindu. 25 ; amends Penal Code,

mad Yakub denies allegation, on obscene publications,

3 5 ^"3

Hindu mystic, on nature of sexual
intercourse, 27

Hindu religion, inseparable from
any social concern, 155 ; non-
social nature of, 156, 165; im-
poses nepotism, 301 ; and defeca- -, .

* ' * League in declaring for Swaraj

tion, 373 ; and plague control,
375 J prescribes mendicancy,
405-6

History of India, early, 270 et seq.

Holderness, Sir T. W., on Un-
touchables, 168-9; on early his-
tory, 273-4

Holy Man, Hindu, 7; officiates at
confinement of princess, 102-3;
as tax upon country's resources,
404-5; Lala La j pat Rai on Sad-
hus, 422

Hook-worm, how contracted, 372-4 ;
cure useless, 373-4 ; incidence of,
in Madras and Bengal, 374 ; in-
cidence in India, 374

Hospital, child with tetanus, 71-2;
the zemindar's wife confined,
78-9 ; purdah hospital, account
of, 51 et seq.

Hotson, Mr. J. E. B., on animals
in Bombay, 255, 258

Husband, the Hindu, rights and
privileges of, scripturally estab-
lished, 43, 57, 72-6 ; viewed as
abstraction by Tagore, 75 \ a & e
of, 22 ; low vitality of, 22, 29-
30; if sterile, may send wife to
temple, 30

Hyderabad, the State of, area and
army, 314; the Nyzaxn*s hoards,
403

Illiteracy, 17; of women, 22, 123,
200; term defined, 123; 25 per
cent, of inhabitants condemned
to, 150; attributed to people's
poverty and to Government's in-
tention to refuse education, 199;
percentage of total population
neld illiterate by Hindu ortho-
doxy, 201

India, area, xo; population, 20 and
note 3 ; history of, see History

Indian Civil Service, its British
members' economic position to-
day, 398-9 ; "the costliest ad-
ministration in the world," 399

Indianization o Public Health

raises age of consent within
marriage bond, 33-4; defeats
farther bills, 34

Indian National Congress, under
Gandhi's control, 3^; "National
Volunteers" the militia of, 333;
joined by All-India Muslim,

1432]

3391. its president on Hindu*
Muslim disunity in 1925, 348;
sanitary habits of members, de-
scribed in Young India, 36^,
note; declares for Aruvedic
Medicine, 386

Indian States, area and population
of, 306 ; territorial integrity
pledged by Queen Victoria, 306-
7 ; visits to, 308 ; character of
government in, 308-10; tend-
ency toward improvement, 309
et seq.; British Political Agent
as factor in, 309-11

Indian Social Reformer, 75, note

Infants' burial, no

Infant marriage of girls, obliga-
tory, 68, 128; penalty of non-
performance, 68-9; disagreement
as to scriptural command, 26;
precludes education, 1 28 ; medi-
cal testimony on results of. Ap-
pendix I

Infant Mortality, 109, no

Infanticide, forbidden by British
law, 70; continued practice of,
69-71

Inferiority, Indian's subconscious
idea of, the base of his search
for "superiority complex" in
Western minds, 22

Influenza, 379

Islam, advent of, 273; Holdemess
on, 274 ; Hindu effort to check,
in South, 274 ; see Muslims

Ismail, Mirza, C. I. E., O. B.
Dewan of Mysore, 312-3

Tains, numbers of, 324, note
Japan, purchaser of India's raw
cotton, 301, 417

}aya, Dutch policy in, 229
oint-family system, compelling pre-

puberty marriage of girls. ^6
Justice, as administered oy British,
324; language changed from
Persian to English, 326; quality
attested by Muslim Association*,

INDEX

339-4*; desired because of reli-
gious bias of native judge, 344;
attested by Maulvi Muhammad
Yakub, 352

Justice, Indian, under the Moghuls,
280*1 ; handicapped by religious
dissensions, 343-4 j judge accept-
ing fees from both sides, 343-4;
witnesses to hire, 344

Kali, Hindu goddess, 4-6; Brah-
mans worshipers of, 10; Kali
Ghat in Calcutta, 4-10

Kashmir, Maharaja of, cow at his
death, 224; cholera in, 372

-Karma/' 31

Knyber Pass, description, 65-6

Khilafat movement, Gandhi em-
braces, 328 ; the AH brothers in,
328-30; defined, 328, note

Kim, 67 ; Kim's Lahore, 361

King-Emperor, H. I. M. the, mes-
sage to Indian Legislature on
Reforms, 297-8; petition of Un-
touchables to, through the Prince
of Wales, 177

Kohat, North-West-Frontier post,
description, 321-2

Kut, Madrassi Sappers at siege of,
172-3

Lahawri, 'Abd Al Hamid, on can-
nibalism in the Deccan, 277 ^

Lahore, sanitation of the old city,
361

La j pat Rai, Lala, on child widows,
86; on mentality of Indian
women and effect of purdah,
119-20; condemns Gandhi's views
on education, etc., 197; quoted,
accusing Government as refusing
education to masses, 199; on
Sadhus, 422

Lai, Rai Bahadur Bakshi Sohan,
quoted, 35

Land-development, its effect on Un-
touchability, 156-7, 160; in Pun-
jab, 160-1

Land-proprietorship, Bernier on,

Language, adoption of English as
medium for instruction, 1 82 ;
number of vernaculars spoken,
192; no common tongue, 192

Lankester, Dr. Arthur, cited, 117

Latrines, in Benares, 359; Mr.
Gandhi on, 362-3 ; in Lanore,
presence and absence of, 362:
and hook-worm, 373; municipal
officer gives history of, 373

Legislature, the Indian, its con-

[433]

struction, j8p; powers, 293;
largely controls public purse,
293; impression of legislators,
295, 296-7 ; effect of lack of his-
toric background, in attempt to
work "democracy," 295-6; King-
Emperor's message to, 297-8

Linschoten, J. H. van, on miserable
condition of Madras peasantry,
277

Literacy, 17; term defined, 123;
of women, 123; of Brahman
women ; percentage of girls with-
drawn from school before achiev-
ing, 128; of population, 150;
largely confined to cities, 299;
opposed by usurers, 401-2;
among Parsis, 416

Lucknow, Hindu temple in park,
story of, 335-6; a Muhammadan
city, 335

Lying, the Indian's attitude toward,
303-5

Macaulay, Thomas Babington, on
Western vs. Oriental education.
181-2; on demand of educated
Hindu for government office,
186-7, 187-8

Madras, a landscape described,
145-6 ; education of Untouchables
in, 157; Madrassi Sapper? at
Kut, 172-3; cruelty to cattle,
244 ; Elihu Yale in, 284 ; British
East India Company in, 284-5 ;
Government of, requests Interna-
tional Health Board of Rocke-
feller Foundation to advise on
Public Health, 313, note; the
Ulema of, on Swaraj, 341-2;
city water-supply, 364-5; hook-
worm in, 373-4

Mahars, practical enslavement of,
164

Mahasabha, the Hindu, of 1926,
demonstration over Untouchabil-
ity, 1 68

Mahomed, Mr. Noor, of Sind,
quoted, t on ^imposition of "Un*

Malaria, 366*-8; in Bombay, 367
Malaviya, Pundit Madan Mohaii,

on premature consummation of

marriage, 40
Manu, quoted, 117
"Marbles and tops,* 9 41
Maternity and child welfare center

described, 161-3 ; Untouchability

as seen in, 162-3
Marriage, of women, inclusive, 106,

note; duty of Hindu wife* as re*

INDEX

ligiously established, 7* et sea.;
no new home set up for bride,
76

Marriage Age, Hindu code for men,
22: for women, 68; cannot be
deferred, 36-7 ; education not al-
lowed to interfere, 126-7 \ subse-
quent education impossible, 133;
pre-puberty cohabitation held nec-
essary, 37 .

Marriage dowries, of a princess,
69-70 ; prohibit education, 131;
heavy drain on country's pros-
perity, 399 et seq.; Hindu girls'
suicides, to save, 400

Mary Victoria, Sister, on physical
status of Bengali girl student,
120

Masturbation, 25-6, 32

McCay, Major D., I. M. S., cited,
380

McKinley, William, President of
the United States, instructions
to Mr. ^Taft, on granting office
to Filipinos, 104

Medical Womens testimony, on ef-
fects of child-marriage, Chapters
V and VIII and Appendix I

Mendicancy, 7 ; mendicancy pre-
scribed by Brahmanic code,
405-11; number of mendicants,
405 ; economic drain of, 422

Midwife, see Dhai

Minto-Morley Scheme, 325^

Misra, B. N., on devadassis, 40-50

Missionaries, Christian, reticence
of, in print, 62; educational ef-
fort for women, 128; teaching
of Untouchables, 161, 165; ac-
claimed by Untouchables, 171

Mitra, Dr. A. N., 368

Montagu, Edwin Samuel, Secretary
of State for India, receives ad-
dresses on proposed Reforms,
from Untouchable organizations,
170-1 ; in Delhi, receives peti-
tions from Muslim Associations,
against Home Rule for India,
330-42

Montgomerie, Alexander^ C. I. E.,
on wounded animals, in Bombay
streets, 253

Moplah outbreak, 329-31

Mortality, of young wives, 35 ; of
infants, 35, 100-10; in child-
birth, 44 ; of women from tuber-
culosis induced by purdah, 119-
20; annual, of British India,
380; from famines, now un-
known, 394

"Mother India," protests of devo-

[434]

tion to, 15-16; no action fitted
to words, 19; the unacknowl-
edged servant of, 20; vision of,
67

Mother-in-Law, the Hindu, 76, 80,
108, 133

Muddiman, Sir Alexander, intro-
duces bill raising age of consent,
38-9

Muhammadanism, Democracy of,
169; freely receives Untouch-
able, 158, 169; religion of the
conqueror, 325 ; its language the
language of letters and the court,
325 ; monotheistic, objects to doc-
trine of Trinity, 327 : respects
Christianity as revealed religion,
^27 ; develops militant character
in peoples, 343

Muharamadan population, percent'
ages of, 324, 342; see Muslims

Muhammadan women, freedom
from infant marriage, in; su-
perior physique in childhood, in,
139; freedom from enforced
widowhood, 1 1 1 ; education not
favored, 124; in Victoria School,
Lahore, 139

Muslims, North- West Frontier a
Muslim country, 322 ; Afghan, in-
cited by Russia, 323 ; effect upon,
of threatened increased autonomy,
325 ; original conquering invaders
use Brahmans for paper-work,
325-6 ; their language gives place
to English, in courts of justice,
326; refuse to abandon Persian,
327 ; object to English, as vehicle
of Christianity, 327; ardent
monotheists, 327; retire within
themselves, 327 ; reenter political
life with hea\y political handicap,
328; All India Muslim League's
alliance with Hindu Swarajists
alarms Islam in India, 339 ; As-
sociations petition Mr. Montagu
against Home Rule, 339-42; per-
centage of, in major provinces,
342; internationalists always and
fighting men, 343 ; their increas-
ing numbers and natural assets,
345; potential power, 345-8;
present political situation, Sir
Abdur Rahim on, 349-51

Mukerjea, Mr. of Baroda, quoted,
^7

Mukherjee, B., quoted, 128

Mysore, the State of, area and
population, 312; recent history
of rulers, 312-3; capital city, its
advanced status, 313; invites In-

INDEX

ternational Health Board of the
Rockefeller Foundation to set
up Public Health administration,
313; high ideals of Maharajah
put into practice, 312-3; its
De wan, 3x2-3; Reforms

Palers, practical enslavement of,

164
Panagal, Raja of, quoted, on Brah-

man vs. public education, 178 .
Panchagavia, potent religious puri-

fication ceremony, 225

b~ - - J * ^-J , AV^lV/lUia Ml, O x p 11VOL1VU WdCXUUlljr, **y

, . H. the Maharajah of, Parakh, Dr. N. N., on mental ef-
fect of purdah, 119

Parekh, Manilal C., quoted, 31

Parsis, ladies of, liberalizing influ-
ence, 116, 415-6; literacy among,
416

Passivity of Hindu psychology,
Lala La j pat Rai on, 110-20; in
women's lives, 136; in resisting
education of Untouchables, 190-
i ; Francisco Pelsaert on, 281

Patronage, transferred to Indian
hands, 328

Paul, Kanakarayan T., on reasons
and effect of lack of women
teachers for villages, 205, 210

Peasant, see cultivator

Pelsaert, Francisco, quoted, on con-
dition of the people, under Mog-
huls, 279-81

Penal code, amendment, on Obscene
Publications, 24-5

People, the common, condition of,
in "Golden Age"; their misery
basis of rulers' wealth, 274;
wasted by wars of Kings, .275-6;
western travelers' reports on pov-
erty and distress, 276 et seq.;
past and present relation to prin-
ces, 309 ; love of shows and
ceremonies, 309

Philippines, America's educational
work in ; parallel between this
and Britain's work in India, 191-
6; America's cattle-breeding in,
235 1 political parallel, 297-8 ;
village well parallel, 369; taxa-
tion, per capita, in, 399; usurer

312

"Mysteries" of India, 150; the
outstanding mystery, 150

Nairs, 154-5

Namasudras, self-education among,
1 60

National Social Conference, on Un-
touchability, 165

"National Volunteers," Indian Na-
tional Congress's, militia, mas-
sacre by, at Chauri Chaura,

Native States, population, 20 ; con-
ditions, and relations to Para-
mount Power, Chapter XXIII

Nawaz Khan, Sirdar Mohammed,

213-14

Nepotism, 301-2

Newell, Miss M. Moyca, collabora-
tion of, Foreword

"Non-cooperation," characterized by
north-country leader, 347-8; fail-
ure of, 353-4

Non-social nature of Hindu mind,
165, 208, 21 1-2, 300-2, 381-2

North- West Frontier, 321-3; a
Muslim country, 322 ; Defense
of, 346 ; Province, 346-8

Nurses, Indian women, not prac-
tical except under close protec-
tion, as of Missions, 203

Obscene advertisements, in Indian-
owned newspapers, 28-9

Obscene publications, Indian Leg-
islature amends Penal code to
conform to Geneva Convention,
exempting religious obscenities,
24-5

O'Dwycr, Sir Michael, quoted, 69-
70

Olcott, Mason, quoted, on impossi-
bility of women teachers for vil-
lages, 204 ; quoted, on attitude
of higher castes toward village
education, 214

Oxford Mission of Calcutta, publi-
cation quoted, on effects of pur-
dah, 121

radmapurana, on Hindu's wife's

duty, 73-4
Pahalajani, B. G., quoted, 253

[4351

of, paralleled by bania, 400-2
Phuka, practice of, torturing cows,
244 ; forbidden by British law,
but not offensive to Hindu opin-
ion, 251

Physical status of average Hindu,
1 6, 17, 32, 44; of Hindu women,
57, 98 ; decadence of, 60 ; of pur-
dahed women, 136; as shown in
"fading" of Indian student, 184 ;
"walking menageries of intestinal
parasites," 379 ; "have acquired an
immunity," 379 ; "have evolved a
sub-grade of existence," 378-80;
American scientist on, 379; su
perior virility of Northern races,
380

INDEX

Pinjrapoles, 253, 262; method of
Hindus' use of, 26*; description
of, 263; American's description
of, 264; religious leader's de-
scription of, 264; Indian dairy-
man's description of 264-5 ; of
Ahmedabad, 267

Plague, bubonic, India the world's
chief reservoir of infection, 374 ;
mortality from, 374-5 ; as poten-
tial international scourge, 375 ;
how communicated, 375 ; plague
control, 375-8; the Swarajist
agitator and, 375 ; visit to a
plague-stricken village, 376-8

Police, British personnel in, 20

Policy, British, in India, 17-18; in
education of women, 128, 135,
136-7; on caste bars to educa-
tion, 156 et scq.; in teaching
mercy toward animals, 260 ; in
administering Reforms, 300 ; af-
fecting Hindu-Muhammadan re-
lation, 324-5 ; described by Sir
Abdur Rahim, 340-51

Political Agent, British official ad-
viser to Indian ruler, in Bharat-
pur, 70, 307, 309; in Mysore,
312

Population, of India, u, 20; in-
creased, 407-8

Portuguese in India, 284

Pre-British conditions, 21 ; Chap.
XXI

Premature sexual intercourse,
Gandhi on, 26-7 ; effects of, 35 ;
4-5 ; impossibility of prevent-
ing, 40, 42; effects of, 55-6;
testified by women doctors, 58 ;
and, Appendix I ; as affecting
child-birth, 98

Princes, Indian, subscribe fund for
education of daughters, 134; ob-
ject to association of young prin-
cesses with politician's daughters,
137; sovereign rights, dignity
and peace pledged by Queen Vic-
toria. 306-7 ; relation with Brit-
ish Government a treaty relation,
307; internal and external rela-
tions, 307-8; Chamber of Prin-
ces, 307-8; character of admin-
istrations, 308-10; story of a
prince's minority and accession,
309-1 1 ; scandals, true and false,
308-11; anti-government press
attacks upon, ^311; handicap of,
311-2; education of, in Chiefs'
Colleges. 311-2; reaction to Re-
forms Act, instance, 3i4-5* in-
evitable rise in event of Britain's

withdrawal, 315; attitude toward
Britain, 15-6; contempt for In-
dian politician, 316; politicians'
undervaluation of their power,
315-7

Prince of Wales, His Royal HigL-
ness, the, visits India, 173-7; in-

cidents in Bombay, 1 73-5 ; in the
North, 175-6; in Delhi, 176-7
Professional women, Indian's_atti-

[436]

tude toward, 203 et seq.; . A.
H. Blunt on, 203-4

Prostitution, of little girls, to
priests and temples, 47-50

Provinces of British India, their
present government, 290-3

Public Health instructor, story of
handling confinement, 106-7 ; in
child-welfare center, 161 et seq.

Public Health Service, Municipal
officer of Benares, his task and
budget, 355-60; task deplored,
360-1 ; problem of pilgrim cen-
ters, 355-61 ; problem of ordinary
cities, as Lahore, 361-2; British
officials of, and village tank, 367 ;
of Bombay, 367 ; British Public
Health Officer and the village
well, 369 ; Indianization of Serv-
ice, results in cholera outbreak.
372; control of pilgrimage and
fair centers, 372; Indian agents
of, murdered, in plague control
work, 375 ; British officer and
plague-stricken village, 376-7 ;
native health officer in same vil-
lage, 377-8 ; provincial budgets
for, statistics, ^381 ; Gandhi in-
duces students in, to leave school,
383

Public Opinion, need and lack of,
140

Puliah, 154-5

Punjab, irrigation enriches peoples,
1 60; Hindu municipal officials
trick Untouchables out of com-
mon schools, 190-1 ; the bania in,
401-2

Purdah, in et seq.; brought in by
Muslims, in, increasing among
Hindus, 112; social prestige of,
112; held necessary for protec-
tion of women, 112 et seq.; a
purdah party in Delhi, 113-14;
dullness of life in, 115-6; Cal-
cutta University Commission, on
prevalence of in Bengal, 116;
less observed in Bengal, 116; oc-
casions high mortality, 117-8;
Dr. Balfour on effects of, 118;
number of women in strict pur-

INDEX

dah, 118-9; mental effect of, Dr.
Parakh on, 119; Lala Lajpat Rai
on, 119-20; Oxford Mission
Journal on, 121 ; A. M. Das
Gupta on, 122 ; possible influence
of, as stimulating anarchy, 122;
in Assam, 127; in schools,
138-9

Qaiyum, Nawab Sir Sahibzada, Ab-
dul, quoted, 42

Queen Mary's College, Lahore, de-
scribed, t 134-6; tuition fees in,
1 34 ; objection of men of rank to
admission of politicians' daugh*
ters, 137

Queen Mary's visit to India, 134

Queea Victoria's proclamation,
quoted, on religious interference,
155-6; cited by Bombay legis-
lator, 158; on qualifications for
office, iQ4; effect of proclamation
on intelligentsia, 194; pledge to
the Indian Princes, 306-7

Rabies, 247-8 ; and note, 249

"Race-Prejudice," 22, 150-1, 159;
race, color or religion no bar to
office, under British East India
Company, 287 ; nor under Crown
Government, 193-4

Rahira, the Hon. Sir Abdur, quoted,
348-51

Raiders, trans-frontier tribal, 65,

Railways, Indian, statistics of, 392-
3 ; Gandhi attacks, 393-4 ; and
famine, 394 ; and development of
trade and markets, 394-5 ; sta-
tistics of mileage and business,
Appendix III, B., 418-9

Ram, Sir Ganga, C. I. E., C. V. O.,
aids widows, 89 ; building -work,
in Lahore, 361

Ram, Miss Vidyabai, M., on mid-
wives' practices, 96

Rangachariar, Diwan Bahadur, T.,
quoted, 36-7, 43 ; on devadassis,
49; on Hindu-Muslim dissen-
sions, 353

Reddi, Rai Bahadur, K. V., quoted,
164

Reforms, the, of 1919, construction
of present Government of India,
of present Act, 294; Gandhi's
289-94 ; consistent development
of original scheme, 294; policy
war upon, 298 : Ganclhi's effect
on Bengal and Central Provinces,
298 ; his waned influence, 298 ;
chief obstacle, 299; administra-

[4.17]

tion of, by British officials, 300.
302; story of Indian prince and
rumor of British departure, 314-
5 ; Hindu-Muslim dissensions
bred by, 327-8; transfer of pat-
ronage to Indian hands, 328 ; pe-
titioned against by Untouchables,
170-1 ; by Muslim Associations,
339-42; revive cult of Aruvedic
and Unani medicines, 386-7

Reserved and Transferred Subjects,
2p2

Reticence, of Western observers as
to fundamentals in^ Indian life,
62 ; of British administrators, in
criticism of Indian, 17-8

Rockefeller Foundation, Interna-
tional Health Board of, Madras
Presidency requests advice of,
313, note; Maharajah of Mysore
requests advice of, 313; Indian
scholarship men in Public Health
service, 355, 360-1 ; anti-hopk-
worm campaign in Darjeeling
district, 374

Ronaldshay, Earl of, The Heart of
Aryavarta, quoted, 24

Roy, Raja Ram Mohan, supports
Crown in forbidding suttee, 83 ;
works for Western education ^of
Hindus, 1 80 ; insists on English
science and language, 180-1

Royal Fusiliers, 2nd Battalion, 66

Russell, Major A. J., I. M. S.,
quoted, 370

Russia, The Man that Walks like
a Bear, 323

Ryot, see cultivator

Saddhus, 7; Lala Lajpat Rai on,
422; see Holy Men

Salvation Army, 227-8, 234, note

Sanitation, Indian, in Benares,
255-6i ; as to latrines, 359. 362;
in Lahore, 361-2; in the Punjab
and Sind, 362 ; in Bengal, Mr.
Gandhi on, 362-4; of the Indian
National Congress Members, 363,
note; Gandhi exonerates British
of responsibility for, 364; water-
supply of City of Madras, 364-5 ;
village tank, 366-7 ; Anti-Malarial
Cooperative Society of Bengal,
368; village well, 368-9; "world
will demand protection from, of
League of Nations," 371 ; Hindu's
views on latrines, night-soil and
use of houses, streets and fields
for defecation, 372-3

Saran, Munshi Is war, quoted, on
women's education, 126

INDEX

quoted, on infant marriage, 39
Schools for girls, statistics of, 129-
30; Queen Mary's, Lahore, and
Victoria School, '

Lahore, de-

Sarda, RaJ Sahib M. Harbilas, Sterility, cause for rejection of

wife, ag; occasioned by man-
gling, 99; by venereal infection,
Si et seq.

, _ Still-birth, 109

scribed, 1 34-40 ; curriculum in Sudra, caste and status, 151; pen-
Victoria School, 139 airy for murder of, by Brahman,
School-teaching, by women, con-
sidered socially degrading, 206-7 ;
the village school teacher, 215
Scott, Dr. Agnes C., quoted, 108

Suicide, of young wives, 76; by
suttee, 83-4 ; of girls, at puberty,

r ^ F ^ r 400

Seal,' Dr. Brajendranath, quoted, Suttee, or Sati, prescribed by Pad-

mapurana, 73 ; forbidden by Brit-

127

Sen, Rai Satis Chandra, opposes
higher education of women, 133
Servants of Indian Society, 165
Setalvad, Sir Chimanlal, quoted, 15
Seton, Sir Malcolm C C, cited,

291, 292, 293

Seva Sadan Society, educational

effort for women, 129, 133, note

Sex stimulation, 22 ct seq.; by

mother, 25-6

Sex-symbols, 23-4; note, 7, 24
Sexual exhaustion, early, 27 ; men-
tal effects of, 31 ; Brahman phy-
sician on, 32; effects of, in in-
ducing abnormal crimes, 122; in
"fading" of brilliant young men,
184

Sikhs, numbers of, 324, note
Sinha, Lord, work for Untouch-
ables, 165

ish Government, 83 ; still prac-
ticed, 83-4 ; opposed by Raja
Ram Mohun Roy; defended by
Bengali gentlemen, 83-4; for-
bidden by British East India
Company, 287

Swaraj, Mr. Gandhi on, 19; as f
cure for tuberculosis, 31 ; op*
posed by Untouchables, 170-1 ;
attitude of party in Indian leg-
islature, 296-7 ; legislators fail to
consult constituency, 300 ; and
the Moplahs, 329-31 ; Mr. Mon-
tagu petitioned against, by Mus-
lim Associations, 339-42 ; evalu-
ated by North-West Frontier
Muslim leader, 347-8; methods
of party characterized by Sir
Abdur Rahim, 348-51 ; agents of,
and plague control, 375-6

Siva, Hindu god, 4, 7 ; represented Swarajists, undervaluation by, of

by image of generative organ, 23

"Slave mentality," self -claimed, of
Indian, 21 ; conviction of infe-
riority, 22; causes, 31

Smith, W., Imperial Dairy Expert,
cited, 241

Smoke, of hearth fires at night-fall,
66

Social welfare work, among Indians Tagore, Sir Rabindranath, on rea-
outgrowtb of Western influence, son for infant marriage, 46 ; on

-J 1 t _* TT?_J.

princes power, 315-7; accuse
Britain of fomenting Hindu-
Muslim dissension, 352; pushing
expenditure of public money on
Aruvedic medicine, 387 ; discour-
age improved cotton production,
391

ideal character of f Hindu mar-
riage, 75 ; on unrivaled merits

_-, of Aruvedic medicine, 387

Son, the Hindu, importance of, 26, "Talk is the only work," 217
79 ; mother's attitude toward, 79 ; Tamils, demon- worshipers, their art

Soman, R. G., of Salara, quoted,
254.

attitude, as adult, toward mother,
80

and system of village govern-
ment, 272-3

Sorabji, Miss Cornelia, 77 ; quoted, Tank, the village, described,
on status of Hindu wife, 77 ; 366-7

quoted, on status of Hindu Taxation, per capita, 399 ; its light*

widow, 8 1 -2

Sorabji, Miss L., on home influ-
ences upon girls, 140

South Africa, Indian immigrants
in, 151, note

Standard of living, 407-9; Appen-
dix III, G, 422

[438]

ness deprives administration of
means to work, 399
Temples, temple bull, 5, 231-2; ob-
scene images in, 25 ; childless
women sent to priest in, 30 ; the
votive tree, 30; girl-children
vowed as priests' and pilgrims'

INDEX

prostitutes, 47-50 ; "Prostitutes

of the Gods/' 48-50
Tetanus, and infant mortality, 97,

and note
Thugs, abolished by British East

India Company, 287
Thyagarajaiyer, Mr., of Mysore,

quoted, 1 84
Trade, imports and exports, 1 1 ; see

Bullion, and Cotton; in grain,

$95
Tribesmen, trans-Frontier, 65, 322-

"Truth," the Indian conception and
evaluation of, 303-5

Tuberculosis, scourge of, M. C.
Parekh on, 31: Dr. Arthur Lan-
kester and Health Officer for
Calcutta on purdah as cause of
high mortality from, 117-8; an-
nual mortality from, 118; Lala
La j pat Rai on, 119-20; Oxford
Mission Journal on, 121

Typhoid, how cultivated, 359

Union of South Africa, Indians in,
151, note

United States of America, Indian
legislator says Supreme Court of,
is guided by Britain, 297; and
Indian cholera, 370, 371

University of Calcutta, Commis-
sion, appointed, 1 24 ; Commis-
sion, quoted, in feeling against
education of women, 127-8; on
impossibility of women teachers,
203-4, 205 ; on influence upon
Hindu-Muslim relations of Eng-
lish education and the conferring
of public office, 326-7

University Education tor Women,
status of and number receiving,
132; universities established,
182-3; their graduates of 1923-4,
in departments, 183; unpopu-
larity of practical subjects, 183

Untouchables, midwives taken
from, 96 ; condemned to illit-
eracy and sub-humanity, by Hin-
dus, 150-63; origin of, 151, 152;
numbers of, 150; ^in South
Africa, 151, note; scriptural ex-
pression of his degradation, 1 52 ;
present status, 152 et seq.; "dis-
tance pollution" by, 154-5; Gov-
ernment's effort for education of,
156-7 ; refused education in
Madras. 157; refused common
rights in Bombay, Bombay leg-
islature on, 157-9; Mr. Noor
Mahomed, on Hindu attitude,

[439]

158-9; possible escape through
Islam or Christianity, 159, 164;
generally refused education in
common schools, 159-60; educa-
tion defeated in Punjab cities,
1 60- 1 ; annual conferences of,
161 ; representation of, 161 ; im-
proving economic status, 161 ;
women furnish main body of
teachers and nurses, 161 ; Un-
touchable mother at child-welfare
center, 162-3 ; alleged inferiority
of character, 164; theoretical
change of Hindu $ political's atti-
tude toward sterile, 165 ; Lord
Sinha works for, 165; Brahmo
Samaj and, 165; all Indian work
for, outgrowth of British influ-
ence, 165 ; sudden political im-
portance of, to Hindus^ 168-9;
until lately not recognized as
Hindus by Hindus, 169; petition
Mr. Montagu, 170-1 ; Brahman's
attitude characterized, 1 70 ; Brit-
ish Government acclaimed by,
171 ; declare will fight any at-
tempt to make India self -gov-
erned, 171 ; acclaim Missions,
171 ; Untouchable soldiers, de-
votion of, 172-3; pay honor to
the Prince of Wales, 175-6;
jockeyed out of Punjab schools,
190-1 ; estimated number of en-
forced illiterates, 200
Usurer, see Bania

Vaughan, Dr. K. O., on midwives*
practice, 95, 99-101 ; on con-
servatism of women, 108

Venereal diseases, Hindu attitude
toward, in case of father of
bride, 29; prevalence of, and
effect, 52-6; popular attitude to-
ward, 56; is cost of cure justi-
fied?, 57; as cause of still-
births, 109

Vernacular, original vernacular
schools, 1 80; Government insists
on teaching in, 182; number of,
and scripts, 192

Viceroy, the, his council, 289, 293,
294; story of, and Pundit, "why
shouldn't I shout 1" 303

Victoria School, for girls, Lahore,
137-40; maintained by subscrip-
tions from England, 138

Vidyasagar, Pandit Iswar Chunder,
champions virgin-widows' remar-
riage, 87; effort sterile, 88

Village, the Indian, 66; without
sufficient teachers, 193; its en-

INDEX

forced illiteracy determines In-
dia's low status, 20 1 ; illiteracy
determined by lack of women
teachers, 201-3; numbers, t and
area, 201 ; women not training
for work in, 208; village
schools, 209-10; astrologer, 209;
attitude of Indian magnate tip-
ward his own town, 211-2 ; illit-
eracy in, 299; visited by politi-
cian only as agitator, 299; see
also cultivator

Village Education Commission,
quoted, on denial of education to
Untouchables, 159-60; on culti-
vator's attitude toward education,
210; on attitude of higher castes
towards education of cultivator,
214

Village School, 209 ; divergent
views on practicality of curricu-
lum, 209-10

Violation of Western women, po-
litical placards inciting, in 1919,

Vishnu, 10 ; followers of, 23-4, 24,

note 6
Visvesvaraya, Sir M., cited, 209-

10, 398, 421
Vital Statistics weak, 109-10; how

collected, 367
Vivekananda, Swami, Bhakti Yoga,

quoted, 24

Well, the village, sanitary influence
of, 368-9

Widow, the Hindu, evil lot of, 81
ft seq.; assumed guilt of, for
death of husband, 81 ; penances,
82; remarriage impossible, 84-5;
virgin widow remarriage advo-
cated in theory, 85 ; dissolute life
induced, 85-6 ; as affected by in-
creasing public prosperity, 86-7 ;
championed by Vidyasagar, 87-8 ;
by Gandhi, 88 ; homes for, 89 ;
number of, 89 ; may not be mid-
wife, 91 ; may not be school
teacher, 206-7

Wife, the Hindu, duties and status
of, 73 ; sent to temple to escape
childlessness, 30 ; early mortali-
ties induced by premature preg-
nancy, 35 ; suicides of, 76 ; Brah-
man wife's attitude, 37 ; educated
wife desired, 126-7 I duties of,
preclude education, 133

Williams, Professor Rushbrook,
quoted, 167

Wilson-Cannichael, Mis. Amy, 48,
and note

Wilson, Woodrow, President of the
United States, quoted, 195

White, Dr. F. Norman, quoted, on
cholera, 369 ; on plague, 374

Women, Hindu, general status of,
57, 117 ct seq.; suicides of
young wives, 76; by modern
suttee, 86 ; fidelity to religion
and ancient custom, 78; in pur-
dah, 1 1 6 ; physical training op-
posed, 120- 1 ; education of, see
Chapter X ; education not de-
sired, 123 et seq.; education not
allowed to delay marriage, 1 26-7 ;
education after marriage impos-
sible, 133; as teachers, 133; sta-
tus in home, 140; impossible as
village school teachers, 201 et
scq.; "free and honest women
against nature." 203 et seq.; all
married save diseased and pros-
titutes, 206, note; number in
teachers' training schools, 207 ;
no impulse to do village teach-
ing, 208 ; suicide of girls at pu-
berty, 400 ; literacy and cultiva-
tion of Parsi, 116, 416; passive
life condemned, by Lajpat Rai,
HQ-2O, by Visvesvaraya, 421;
enfranchisement of, Appendix

Women's labor, economic effect of
loss of, Appendix III. F, 421

Wood, Sir Charles, Despatch of
1854 on education, quoted, 182

Wylie, Dr. Marion A., on mid-
wifery, 94, 95 ; on feeding at
birth, 97 ; on conservatism of
older women, 101, 108-9

Yakub, Maulvi Muhammad, on re-
ligious dissensions and British
justice, 352-3 ; mentioned, 353
Yale, Elihu, in Madras, 284
Young India, Mr. Gandhi's Weekly,
quoted, 15, 19; on sanitary hab-
its of Indian National Congress-
men, 363, note

Zenana, the, life in, 77 ; necessity
of, for protection of women, 113;
education in, after marriage,
133

T440]